


Paint it Black

by Cassiopeias_shadow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, Art History, Artist Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Bottom Harry Potter, Calligraphy, Case Fic, Happy Ending, Hero Worship, M/M, Praise Kink, References to Jane Austen, Rimming, Sculpture, Slow Burn, Snark, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Top Draco Malfoy, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28093866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassiopeias_shadow/pseuds/Cassiopeias_shadow
Summary: Officially, Auror Potter has been assigned to the duty of Draco’s probationary officer after he is released from house arrest. Unofficially, Harry’s being pressured by the Head Auror to drum up false accusations against him.Draco is working as a professional illustrator and calligrapher. Harry doesn’t believe Draco is still a criminal, but there’s something strange about Draco’s portfolio - and Draco never, ever lets him get a look inside it.Author’s note: My original intention with this fic was to write a bit of fluff about Draco doodling Harry’s name in his notebook, and what came out was a snarky, slow burn case fic and something close to an artistic manifesto. I like this better.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 105
Kudos: 230





	1. I see a red door and I want it painted Black

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would write a bit of fluff. 
> 
> I can't, it turns out. This is going to be 100,000 words of slow burn case fic with some sex scenes thrown in to keep it interesting. I started this fic with the thought, "wouldn't it be funny if Draco was doodling his and Harry's name in his notebook, and Harry found it and thought it was precious?" but that somehow became this monster of a book. I am still writing it as of publishing the first chapter, but I have over 30,000 words done and most scenes at the end - I'm editing, writing part two, adding stuff to part 1 to make it interesting, etc. This will be finished... shortly!
> 
> I'm also participating in two fests, so please give my account a follow if you'd like updates on the other things claiming my attention right now.

Chapter 1

Harry knew, just knew, the morning meeting was going to be shit, and he was going to get stuck with some useless case. But if someone had told him it was going to go this far sideways, he would have spent five minutes longer wanking in bed this morning instead of showing up on time. 

“Er,” he managed, staring hard at Robards and trying not to notice his partner stifling laughter beside him. “Is there any particular reason you’ve picked me for this…” he searched for the most diplomatic way to say what he had in mind, and failed. “This… er, total bloody disaster of an assignment?” 

At this, Neville could not help himself, and openly guffawed. Somewhere behind them, Harry could hear Ron bang his head against the wall. He’d hear it from him later, at the pub. Ron was always trying to tell Harry how to play politics in the department. Not that Harry ever listened. 

Robards looked at him, his countenance as severe as Harry had ever seen it. “Let’s discuss this in private after the meeting, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nodded. “Yes, let’s,” he said, murderously. Robards shot him another look that clearly communicated not only Harry’s subordinate role in the Auror department but also the impending disciplinary action that would follow a single additional act of public disrespect.

Harry was already knackered after they’d wrapped up their last case. It had taken ten teams of Aurors, and they’d been living in the Black Forest for fifteen months, subsisting off rock cakes and jerky of dubious origin. Harry had celebrated his twenty third birthday hiding in a cave after running from the pack of werewolves they’d been tracking. He was stranded without his wand for forty-eight hours. It was a near thing he was even alive, but he’d loved every second of it, and he’d been looking forward, on his return to England, to being assigned the illegal potions ring investigation. 

And now, this. 

Fuck. 

Ron and Cho left pleased as punch, clutching a file full of dossiers on actual dark wizards selling potions that promised their purchaser a very good time indeed. And since Harry’s new assignment was so very trivial that he didn’t even need a partner to carry out his duties, Neville had the good fortune of joining them as a Herbology consultant. 

Harry waited until the rest of the department filed out, the door snicking shut behind the secretary as he left. He and the head Auror were finally alone. 

“Why on earth, Robards, have you condemned me to… to babysitting duty?”

Robards sighed and leaned forward, his closed fists planted on the table. “You’re the only one suited to this, Potter.”

“You’ve got to be joking. Out of the whole department, you pick me, given our - given our history with each other? Literally anyone is better suited to do this.”

“No, they are not,” Robards said, quietly. “You’re the only person on this team who knows him well. Everyone else either took bribes from his father when he was still alive, or is prejudiced against him. Hates him.”

“I hate him,” Harry said, with feeling. 

“Do you really?” Robards said. “I rather thought, after you spoke for him at the trials, that you’d put the past behind you.” 

Harry broke eye contact with Robards and stared at his reflection in the polished mahogany of the table. 

“It’s still - it’s unfair Robards - oh, don’t give me that -” Harry had caught Robard’s rather dramatic eye roll. “I’m not being entitled. I caught Greyback wandless, for fuck’s sake, I’m better than the other aurors and you know it, stop treating me like -”

“An employee of the Auror department?” Robards asked, thunderously, his fists still planted stoutly in front of him. “Someone who is required, required, Potter, to follow orders? To do what is asked of him, according to the oath he took when he accepted this position? Pull your head out of your arse for a minute, and listen to why you’ve been assigned to watch him.”

Robards paused to take a breath, and Harry seized his opportunity. “House arrest duty is junior auror training detail, Robards, I’ve earned the right to -”

“This isn’t simple house arrest duty!” Robards puffed up all five foot four inches of his stocky frame. “Draco Malfoy has officially transitioned out of the Home Parole program. He’s going to be free to move about wizarding Britain again, and he needs a probation officer that’s personally familiar with him, so that when - “ Harry made a note of protest at this - “yes, when, he makes contact with Dark Wizards again, and commits crimes, there’s an unbiased observer there to catch him at it. Someone who can make a clean case of it in the Wizengamot. Someone who will be convincing in a trial.”

“Robards, Malfoy isn’t a dark wizard. If he was a dark wizard, I wouldn’t have spoken for him. He’s a total pillock,” Harry said, “but I highly doubt he’ll commit crimes once he’s been released from the Manor.” 

Robards leaned forward again, his knuckles cracking on the table under the not inconsiderable weight of his frame. “Auror Potter. Draco Malfoy will report to you for probation for a period of one year. You will surveil his house, his movements, and his communications. You will inform me of any suspicious activity, and you will build a case to put him in Azkaban, where he belongs. Is that clear?” 

Harry sighed. This was even more of a nightmare than he had thought. There was no way he was going to fabricate charges against Malfoy, no matter how much of a prat he’d been in school. He’d work out a plan with Ron and Neville later. “Clear, sir.” 

He grabbed the file in front of him and made to leave, but he noticed something strange about the name scrawled on top. Malfoy had been crossed out, and in its place was - 

“Sir,” Harry said. “Why does this file say ‘Draco Black’?”

Robards smirked. “Right. Forgot to tell you. He’s changed his name.” 

“Why would he do that?” Harry asked. 

“That’s what you’re paid to find out, Potter.”

\---------------------------------

Ron and Neville were nearly pink with glee by the time Harry caught up with them for after work pints. When he pulled a stool up to the end of their table, they were in the middle of regaling Hermione with the blow-by-blow of the morning meeting. 

“And then -” Neville was nearly helpless with laughter, bent over the table and struggling to get enough air in to finish his sentence, “he called it a ‘total bloody disaster of an assignment’, right to his face. And Kingsley was standing in the back of the room, Hermione, it was beautiful.” 

Hermione looked up at Harry, concerned. “Harry. We’ve spoken about this. You’re never going to replace Robards as head of the department if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head.” 

“Right you are, Hermione,” said Ron, taking a sip of his drink and looking carefully at Harry. “What did you talk about when you stayed behind? Anything we can hear about?”

Harry glanced around, making sure they weren’t within hearing distance of one of Robard’s cronies. They liked to frequent the Leaky after work. “It’s not classified. Not officially. Robards wants me to dig up dirt on Malfoy.” 

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” said Ron. “He’s probably plotting to smuggle dark artifacts into the country. Or maybe he’s a vampire. Ooh, Harry, I bet that’s what it is, mate. He’s pale enough.” 

Neville nodded sagely, but Hermione rolled her eyes. “A vampire, Ron, honestly. The Creature Department would have heard - I would have seen some documentation, with all the time I spend in the department files.”

“Well, what then? What’s Robards think he’s up to?”

“Nothing, that’s just it. He doesn’t have any intelligence that Malfoy is doing anything wrong, but he wants to see him thrown in Azkaban no matter what, and he thinks I’ll do it for him.” Harry felt a seething anger he tried to drown with his pint of Butterbeer. He remembered the time he was sixteen, and Scrimgeour had cornered him at The Burrow.

At that age, Harry had point blank refused to allow himself to be used that way, and here he was seven something years later, facing the same treatment and taking it. 

“Well, you won’t do it, will you,” said Ron, firmly, as if he could hear Harry’s brewing sense of self-disgust. “I’ll help you write the reports. We’ll make sure you look like you’re cooperating, and we’ll also make sure we don’t write anything incriminating that Malfoy doesn’t deserve.”

Neville grinned. “And I’ll help you write the reports if he does deserve it,” he told Harry cheerfully. “It’s odds on he will.”

Hermione drummed her fingers on the table top. Harry could see the gears in her head starting to whir. “I wonder why Robards cares so much about Malfoy’s probationary supervision,” she said, absently. “Nobody’s seen Malfoy for years. He’s been locked up in the Manor, and he’s stayed out of the papers. He and his mother haven’t made as much as a peep to the press, and I know Rita Skeeter approached them about ghost writing a tell-all. They’ve been quiet as church mice.” 

“Maybe Robards has a thing about Death Eaters,” said Ron grimly. “There’s so many that escaped punishment, he could want to make an example of them.”

“Or maybe he’s heard something, but he’s not telling Harry,” said Neville. “It wouldn’t be the first time an Auror wasn’t told everything about the case they were working on. He could be keeping Harry in the dark for a reason.”

Harry slammed his empty pint onto the table. “Yes, and that’s exactly why we’re all trying to get him demoted, and me appointed,” he said. “The Auror office is full of corruption, and those practices give people a place to hide their intentions. We’re a team. We have enough of a job fighting dark wizards and evil people without keeping secrets and -”

“Oi, I didn’t come all the way here for another Saint Potter lecture,” said Cho, sliding in beside Hermione. 

“Oh hi, Cho,” said Hermione, brightly. “I didn’t know you were planning to stop in. Get off early?”

“No, I’m going back in to finish up in a bit, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make fun of Potter, here.” She whacked him on the shoulder from across the table. “That was really incredible insubordination, Harry. First rate.” 

Harry stood abruptly and walked, dispiritedly, in the direction of the bar. 

\------------------------------

Harry spent the next day in a hung-over haze. He was aware that his first duty in his assignment was to make contact with Malfoy - Draco, rather, since he was no longer Malfoy, apparently- and arrange to meet him, so the first thing he did when he finally staggered out of bed was bite the bullet and send an owl off to the Manor. 

He was just sitting down in the kitchen to a bit of toast when his floo roared to life, and a delicately folded scroll popped out of the fireplace.

Harry leaned across the table and plucked it out of the fading green flames. It was proper parchment paper, so soft it felt like linen, and sealed with unimprinted black wax. Harry opened the letter and frowned. 

It was written in the most beautiful script he had ever seen. The black ink was stark against the flawless paper, and every letter curled precisely into the next, the ends of words caressing the empty space beside them with sweeping curlicues. But Harry had sent his letter not fifteen minutes before, which meant Malfoy had produced this script in less than a quarter of an hour. 

Harry shook his head and tried to read the elaborate writing. 

Mr. Potter,  
Thank you for your owl. Yes, I would also like to meet with you as soon as possible. My solicitor informs me that the meeting must occur within seven days of being released from house arrest, which I believe is this coming Saturday. I am, therefore, at your disposal any day of this week, at any time. 

Draco Black

Harry scowled at the very formal “Mr. Potter” at the top of the page, but supposed that he was Draco’s actual probation officer. The situation prompted some formality. Harry took out a biro he had sitting next to him and scrawled on the bottom of the page, 

Brilliant, Monday, three o’clock, Ministry of Magic Auror Department. Show the office secretary this letter. Thanks, HP

\--------------------------

On Monday, the Auror cubes were in a state of total pandemonium. 

A blimp had exploded - or as the report put it, “catastrophically deflated” - at a Muggle football stadium due to a case of accidental magic. No one was hurt, but whoever had caused the explosion had also filled the blimp beforehand with rubber ducks. It was all hands on deck for the entire ministry, and everyone from Kingsley Shacklebolt down to the greeting witch in the lobby was casting memory charms and trying to contain the unmanageable hoard of quacking, waddling rubber ducks trying their level best to escape the pitch. 

It would have been funny if Harry wasn’t so exhausted by the end of the day, and when he finally came back to the office and saw Draco sitting alone in a chair by his cubicle, he waved him off. 

“Oh fuck - Mal- I mean, Draco, I completely forgot.”

Draco hummed testily. “I’m sure you’ve been very busy.” His hands were folded patiently in his lap. Harry spared second to notice the excellent black wool robes he wore. For all their darkness, they fell around him as if they weighed not an ounce. A white shirt peaked above their austere buttons, and met the sturdy column of Draco’s neck in a ruffle. 

“Yes, it was - well. It’s been quite a day. Could we meet tomorrow?”

Draco agreed, and Harry practically ran out to the apparition point, he was so desperate to buy a kebab and pass out at home. 

Naturally, he’d forgotten that the next day was meetings, booked solid, with the Creature department and the Wizengamot, processing the werewolves they’d brought in from Bavaria. And so again, Harry returned to his cubicle in the early evening, to find Draco sitting opposite his desk, looking quite hungry indeed.

“Fuck. Sorry. Again.”

“No bother,” said Draco, though his tone implied that he was very much bothered. 

“I can’t make another appointment until Friday,” Harry said. “Hearings.”

Draco said nothing in response, only nodded. 

Harry was starving. “Look, there’s a kebab stand just outside the ministry. Can I buy you one? By way of… of apology?”

Draco looked extremely suspicious. “A… pardon. A what?”

“A kebab,” Harry said. 

Draco shook his head. “No, thank you. I have food at home,” and with a switch of his long black robes, he walked past Harry out of the office. 

Harry set their next appointment via owl the next day for half past eight Friday morning, which of course was the day an escaped erumpent, confiscated the night before from an illegal smuggling operation, managed to destroy half the atrium. He received an owl an hour before his appointment notifying him that all ministry officials were to do whatever work they could from home while the creature department employees rounded him up and set everything to rights. 

Smiling to himself at the thought of Hermione trying to wrangle an erumpent, he shot off an owl to Malfoy Manor explaining that their appointment would now take place at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, at the time they had originally planned. 

Harry didn’t have Draco’s file with him - it was still at his desk at the ministry - so he put some parchment on a spare clipboard and tried to remember what was on the form of questions he was meant to ask at their initial meeting. He had done parole interviews before during his first year out of training, and it wasn’t difficult, but it was an awful lot of work transcribing it all afresh, with the result that he didn’t have time to shower or change into his Auror robes before he heard the doorbell go in the front hall. 

“Shit,” he said, standing up; realizing he was barefoot, he pulled on a pair of trainers and made his way to the door. 

Draco was standing rigidly on his front step. Harry noticed that he was wearing the same set of robes he’d had on the other times they’d seen each other, at the ministry, but now he had a chance to… take them in. Properly. And they were… they were…

Impeccable, said Hermione’s voice in his head. Exquisite. 

His shoes looked old-fashioned, like the high heeled slippers men wore long ago with a fancy white wig, only they couldn’t be old, as they were jet black and so shiny they must have been polished with petroleum. Draco wore black… tights? Leggings? Harry didn’t know what to call them, but they hugged the muscles of his calves so tightly they may well have been painted on. They disappeared into black breeches, which became a tunic of sorts, all made of soft black linen and held together smartly with a row of several dozen cloth buttons. 

Underneath the tunic, Draco wore a white shirt, not frilly so much as it was billowing, like a pirate might have worn, only with fewer embellishments. Simpler. It was gathered in a bunch at his wrists, and the fabric beyond the bunches fell down to the first knuckles of his hands, each of which sported a single golden ring on the middle fingers. 

Above the tunic, Draco had draped himself with a sleeveless black robe in the same linen as the tunic, only it had been embellished with panels and black embroidery. The tiny thousand stitches appeared to shift and turn with the fabric, sometimes looking like constellations, sometimes resolving into a single dragon. The weighty hood on the back fell in a great cascade halfway down Draco’s back. 

Harry’s eyes raked up the other man’s tall figure, finally meeting his face, his neck craned back a bit at an angle (when did Draco find the time to get so tall, Harry thought), a face which he now noticed was watching him with what could only be described as disgust commingled with a mighty disappointment. 

“Mr. Potter,” Draco said, his lip curling. 

Harry nodded at him. “Draco,” he said, the given name unfamiliar in his mouth. He realized he was standing in the doorway, and shifted backward, awkwardly. “Come in. Just through here - the sitting room.”

Draco had entered the foyer and stopped, stock still, his lip reaching new heights on the side of his face. Harry took in Grimmauld Place with fresh eyes. It was true he didn’t keep it as clean as surely Draco’s army of house elves kept Malfoy Manor, but it was tidy enough. He hadn’t redecorated after the last purge of dark artifacts nearly ten years ago, during the war; he’d just moved in with his Hogwarts trunk and set up camp in Sirius’ bedroom. All his worldly possessions sat in the trunk still, at the foot of Sirius’ bed. It’s not like he had any reason to go round buying furniture, or replacing the peeling wallpaper. It suited him fine, as a place to live. 

Evidently, it did not suit Draco fine, even as a place to visit. “Potter, this is - this is where you live?”

Harry felt two opposing feelings at once - relief that Draco had dropped the “mister” off the front of his name, and irritation that he could be such an incurable snob. “Yes. It is. Let’s get started, if you wouldn’t mind.” He waved the clipboard at him, which said “PROBATIONARY INTERVIEW” in large letters at the top of the form, and gestured towards the room just off the foyer. 

Draco made a conciliatory motion with his chin and walked through to the sitting room, at which point Harry could see he barely repressed a shudder of revulsion at the dusty sofas. He spent a solid minute - actually spent sixty full seconds - taking in each option for sitting, finally selecting a rigid wooden chair Harry had shoved into a corner. He plucked it up by an arm and hauled it to the center of the room, across from the chaise lounge. 

Shaking his head, Harry sat down. “Is that the chair that least offends your pureblood sensibilities?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” Draco said, eyes rolled up to the ceiling so far they were practically glued there. 

“I’d offer you tea, but I’m afraid my tea service is about a decade behind the current -”

“For Merlin’s sake, get on with it,” Draco said testily, taking his eyes off the ceiling and fixing them on the floor.

Harry felt himself smiling unexpectedly. “Alright, then.” He picked up a biro from the table in front of him. “I have some questions for you, and I’m sorry if you already answered them for the Auror in charge of your house arrest -”

“Dawlish,” said Draco. “Did he not hand over my file?”

“I have it,” said Harry. “I’ve looked over it, briefly, but I prefer to get a feel for things myself, if you don’t mind. It helps me organize things mentally.”

“What ‘things’ could you need to organize?” asked Draco, his temper rising. “Am I under investigation?”

“No,” said Harry, more guiltily than he meant to. Draco was under investigation, against Harry’s protests to Robards, and he wasn’t meant to tell him about it. He steadied his voice. “Of course not, but I’m in charge of your transition to probation, and I’d like to do my job the best I know how, if that’s fine with you?”

Draco nodded carefully. “It is.”

“Could you state your name please?”

“Draco Black,” Draco replied, evenly. 

“Why did you change your name?” Harry said as he wrote. 

“Is that one of the questions you have to ask me?”

“No - I…”

“Then it’s none of your concern,” Draco said flatly.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Right. Date of birth?”

“The fifth of June.”

“Year?”

“You know the year, Potter.” 

“Look, could you just -”

“Fine. 1980.”

“Current residence?” 

“Wiltshire.” 

Harry felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. He knew it was going to be like this, but in all the chaos of the week, he hadn’t quite prepared himself for how frustrating this was going to be. “Where in Wiltshire?”

Draco sighed. “At an ancestral property belonging to my family.”

Like blood from a fucking stone. “So - Malfoy Manor?”

Draco nodded. Harry wrote. 

“Does anyone reside there with you?”

“My mother,” Draco answered. 

“Domestic servants?” Harry asked. 

At this, Draco appeared incensed. “You know bloody well we’ve no domestic servants, Potter.”

Harry shook his head in frustration. “You - yes, you do, the manor has house elves, and those have to be registered on your forms,” he said.

“We don’t have any house elves, they were all freed or redistributed in our reparations settlement.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Right. Er -” he glanced down at the form he’d transcribed. “Any magical animals on the property?”

“They took the peacocks too, if that’s what you’re asking.” Draco crossed his arms. 

“I wasn’t - I was asking about your owls.” 

Draco turned his gaze out the window, his arms still crossed. Harry knew, from the look on his face, that the window pane was grimy. Actually, Harry had thought to himself that he ought to have the casings and trim replaced, as they were quite old and cracked in a few places, and let the cold in. 

“The owls didn’t make it through the occupation,” Draco said. 

“The - the occupation?” Harry asked. “You mean -”

“Yes, I mean,” said Draco. “Him. His - his snake.”

Harry felt a moment of actual sympathy for Draco. “Mine didn’t make it through the war either. My owl, that is,” Harry said. “Hedwig.” 

“I’d heard that,” Draco said. He didn’t say he was sorry, or that he knew how Harry must feel. Harry felt unexpectedly grateful to him. He looked back down at the form, which had turned a bit blurry. Harry blinked twice, and it became clear again. 

“So, no magical creatures, no elves, and you live with your mother,” said Harry. 

“It sounds so depressing when you put it like that,” said Draco, drily. 

“What about income? I assume your properties - “

“What properties?” Draco asked him, his dander rising again, the nearly human moment they’d just shared evaporating. “Surely you don’t think we still have properties?”

“I - I thought all manors have lands,” Harry said. “Isn’t that the income you live off? Renting the land to farmers?”

“That’s how we made our money before,” Draco told him. “The lands were confiscated and paid off for reparations. How do you not already know this? Don’t you read the papers?”

“Not every day,” said Harry, truthfully. “If they confiscated the lands, why didn’t they confiscate the manor, too?”

“Nobody wanted it,” said Draco, dully. “Least of all, me.”

“Er - moving on,” said Harry, feeling distinctly awkward. “What do you do for income, then?”

Draco looked up sharply. “I’m an illustrator.”

This was the least likely response Harry could have imagined. “A - a what?”

“An ill-u-stra-tor,” Draco said slowly, like he thought Harry might not be familiar with the term. “I draw things. For money.” 

Harry was stunned into silence; however, given the elaborate nature of the script on the letter he’d received last week from Draco, he shouldn’t have been quite so surprised. 

“I assume you know what it means to draw?” Draco asked him, sharply.

“I do - I didn’t know you were an artist,” Harry said. 

“I’m not an artist,” said Draco, emphatically. “I illustrate stationary and address wedding invitations. Calligraphy, and doodling. I’m hardly Michelangelo.”

Harry looked at Draco, taking him in as if for the first time. Every bit of him was perfect; he had arranged himself just so - his hair wasn’t slicked back anymore, but it was sleek and flawless against his head, parted three quarters of the way across it. His robes, his shoes, his skin, his insistence on finding the least offensive chair in the room, the elegant disregard for Harry’s shabbiness - it all added up to a rather severe sensibility. Harry couldn’t relate to it. He didn’t care how he was dressed, or what his house looked like. 

“That - that work must suit you,” Harry said. Draco looked vaguely offended. “Because you’re so - particular. Artistic work must - you’re good at it, I bet.”

“I am,” Draco said confidently, though with more resignation than pride. He reached into his pocket and drew out a calling card. “For my file. If you’d like.” 

Harry took the card in his hand. It was milk white and made of stiff cardstock. Whorls and scrolls of ink danced across it as soon as he touched it, resolving gradually into words. It read, “Black Calligraphy” and it had a telephone number underneath, and stranger still, an actual email address. 

Draco had an email address. 

Harry stared from the card up to Draco, then back down at the card, then back up to Draco. Then he looked down at the card again, and a funny noise happened in the back of his throat, sort of like the noise a blender would make, but only if it was broken. 

“Don’t look so horrified, Potter. If a muggle takes the card, the letters don’t dance on it. It’s only enchanted for wizards.”

“You… I wasn’t… you have -” Harry couldn’t quite settle on which astonishing thing he had just learned to comment upon. “You work for muggles?”

Draco gave him an inscrutable look. “My services are contracted by Muggles. Quite frequently. You wouldn’t believe the amount of pounds Muggles are prepared to spend on wedding stationary. And it’s - well, it’s obviously a bigger market than wizarding weddings.”

“How -” Harry wet his lips quickly with his tongue. He had to get out of that habit. Robards kept reminding him that it was his “tell” - everyone knew he was nervous when he did it, and suspects picked up on these things. “How on earth did you decide to create a calligraphy business?”

Draco frowned. “Is that a question required by the form?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Then it’s none of your concern,” Draco told him.


	2. No colors anymore I want them to turn black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes to Malfoy Manor.

They mutually elected to meet on Tuesdays. Tuesday was light administratively for Harry, most ancillary paperwork and meetings occurring at the Auror office on Mondays, and Wednesdays and Thursdays, Harry was assigned to hearings for cases just wrapping up. Naturally, half his morning on Friday was to be absorbed, in future, by writing reports on Draco for Robard’s sake, and for reading through the mail and owls intercepted to and from Malfoy Manor. 

Harry intended the other half of Friday mornings to be spent moaning to anyone who would listen about being assigned the worst duty in the department. Probably Neville. And it was Harry’s goal to skive off work every Friday afternoon. He’d earned a bit of time off in the Black Forest, and now he was going to leave work after an early lunch once a week, wank in his own shower, have a kip, and drink beers in his back garden until his friends came over. 

Monday was about as horrible as could be expected. Cho and Ron received glowing praise for their work on the potions ring. They had already discovered, through Cho’s exhaustive research of the clandestine financial documentation on a previous case, the likely location of a warehouse, and Ron was tailing suspects to try and get them to turn informant. Harry was nearly green with envy when it was his turn to report, publicly, on Draco. 

Halfway through reporting their meeting, Harry’s stomach turned over. He was explaining Draco’s calligraphy business, and suddenly, he felt so uncomfortable that he shut his mouth mid-sentence. 

“Auror Potter?” Robards prompted him. “What about it? What can you tell us?”

“Er,” Harry hesitated. Draco hadn’t told him anything in confidence, had even watched him write down what he’d said on the paperwork. He knew it would become a matter of record, but even so, sitting in a room of twenty other Aurors and…  _ informing _ on him felt somehow disloyal. 

_ Disloyal _ . Harry shook his head. He had no loyalty to Draco. 

“Sorry. He’s running a calligraphy business. He illustrates wedding invitations and addresses them. Wizards, and muggles, apparently.”

“Sounds like a cover for a money laundering operation,” said Robards. “Find a way to get a hold of his financial records. We’ll crucify him.”

When they left the meeting, Harry realized his hands were shaking as he went to grip the door handle. 

_ Odd, _ he thought. 

\-----------------------------

The following morning was a Tuesday, and so Harry put on his Auror robes and apparated straight to Malfoy Manor after breakfast. 

He appeared with a lurch in front of the manor gates, but instead of forming into a face and demanding identification, as they had on the second to last day of the war, they were crumbling and disused. The wrought iron had been… plundered, possibly, and the stones on either side of the archway overturned. 

Harry looked around for a bell to pull or somewhere to knock to let Draco know to pull the wards open, but none was forthcoming, so he cautiously stepped through the gates, if they could still be called gates. 

Nothing happened. The wards were down. Gone. 

Harry made his way slowly up the long drive. It had once been cobblestone, but those too had fallen into disrepair, and were scattering across the broad lawn, which hadn’t been tended in what looked like ages. 

As he approached the house, he noticed the white marble was scarred and cracking in places. It was rent with long, black cracks.  _ Dark magic _ , Harry thought, though whether it was recent or from what Draco had delicately referred to as “the occupation”, he didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine the current iteration of Draco practicing dark magic. Really any iteration, Harry thought, remembering how sick Draco had looked sixth year. 

He reached the main doors, and finally he felt the crackle of wards. Harry reached up to the knockers, or rather, where the knockers should have been, but they too were gone the way of the wrought iron gates. If this were The Burrow, he would have knocked, safe in the knowledge that he would be heard, but he doubted anyone would hear him in a house as large as this. 

Just as he had raised his fist to knock, the door pulled open quickly, and Narcissa Malfoy stood inside. 

She was just as pale as ever, but it looked like she’d lost four stone since the last Harry had seen her. She couldn’t weigh over a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her cheeks were pulled into dramatic hollows, and her hair, white now instead of blonde, was thinning in patches so that her scalp was visible. Her eyes were sunk into black hollows, and her robes hung off a frame that could only be described as skeletal. 

Harry sputtered. “Mrs - Mrs. Malfoy. It’s good to-”

“Black,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “We’ve changed our name.”

“Ah. Yes, Draco had said. I apologize.”

“No matter,” she replied, and shuffled off away from him, towards the rooms past the front hall. “Draco is in the library. I’ll take you to him.”

She walked several steps in the direction of a doorway, and Harry rather thought she wouldn’t make it, she was so unsteady on her feet, but she stayed upright by some miracle. They walked together past a door that had been sealed with large beams of wood nailed across either side, and another doorway without its door, past which was nothing but blackened walls and a mound of ash. 

Harry glanced around the hallways they were walking through, and was shocked at their state of disrepair. He’d thought  _ his  _ wallpaper had been bad enough, but the wallpaper of Malfoy Manor had decayed to an indistinguishable pulp. Harry craned his head back and saw sunlight coming in through the high vaulted ceiling in several places. Water had gotten in and destroyed the brocade on the walls by degrees, and now it hung tattered and molding everywhere Harry looked. 

There was hardly any light where they walked, save the sun coming in through the rafters, but there was enough for Harry to make out leaves and other debris crowding the corners, hatboxes and disused furniture shoved into piles, what looked like… rat droppings, or dead insects, everywhere underfoot. Cobwebs dusted everything, hanging on every light fixture and drooping so low from the walls and door frames Harry had to duck his head to avoid them. It wasn’t messy, or untidy - it was decrepit. Worse. 

Squalid. 

How could Draco have come to Harry’s house and judged the state of it, knowing his own was a filthy wreck? Harry shook his head disbelievingly. 

“You must forgive us for the mess,” Narcissa said, as if able to hear his thoughts. “It’s been some time since we’ve had visitors.”

“It’s no bother,” said Harry, untruthfully. It bothered him horribly that Draco could keep his clearly frail mother in these conditions. 

“Draco’s just through here. The library. Shall I bring you any tea?”

“No thank you,” said Harry, thinking he wouldn’t eat anything cooked or stored in this house under any circumstances. He approached the large oak door. He reached his hand out to turn the doorknob, and paused. Behind the door, he could hear - scribbling. Scratching. Like a thousand quills, all working at once. 

Harry opened the door, and saw… a thousand quills, all working at once. 

They worked entirely by themselves, autonomously, scribbling on envelopes, in rows of five. Each row of quills was working at a long, immaculately polished table, of which there were at least twenty set in a perfect line to the back of the room. Harry looked up and down the room at them, and saw the splendid bookshelves lining the walls, two stories high and filled entirely with excellently maintained leather-bound books. 

The ceiling of the library was barrel vaulted, but this ceiling wasn’t cracked or neglected - rather, it contained a fresco painting of all the witches and wizards Harry had ignored in  _ The History of Magic _ since first year. There was Merlin, and King Arthur, the Peverell Brothers, Agrippa, Sir Cadogan, and more modern wizards - Nicholas Flamel, Grindelwald, and…  _ Dumbledore _ , Harry realized, and next to him… was Hermione, and  _ Harry Potter _ , holding Draco’s hawthorne wand. 

_ I’m hardly Michaelangelo _ , Draco had told him at their first meeting.  _ Calligraphy, and doodles _ . 

Doodles. There was a thousand square feet of Renaissance-style fresco above Harry’s head, and only one likely painter. Given a bit of spare time, Draco had trained himself in classical painting, and given the same bit of spare time, Harry pulled himself off and drank beer in his garden. He felt a very pointed sense of inadequacy. 

Harry turned his attention back to the quills. Amazed, he stepped closer to one, and saw it dancing atop an envelope, inscribing a return address in the upper left corner. The next quill did the same, and the next. When they were finished, the envelopes flew to a pile at the end of the long table, and another envelope materialized in front of them. 

At the next table, the quills drew a picture on a blank rectangle of ivory cardstock. It was two rabbits, one dressed in a coat and tails, the other wearing a wedding veil. The quills were in various states of progress on this picture. One of them was just starting on the rabbits’ ears, while another had finished and was writing, in beautiful script, the bride and groom’s names beneath them. A rather large pile of finished invitations was piled up at the end of this second table, and the third, and the fourth. 

At the fifth and sixth table, the quills were illustrating smaller rectangles of cardstock. These were evidently RSVP cards, and the seventh and eighth tables had their respectively smaller envelopes. The quills were addressing those envelopes with the return address he’d seen on the first table. 

Walking along the rows of tables, Harry saw other invitations, other envelopes, in the works, each quill furiously looping and whirling itself around, dipping its nib in ink as it ran low, scratching out pretty cottages and flowers on illustrated cards. 

About five tables from the end, Harry saw Draco, sat at a mammoth oak desk, addressing an envelope himself. He did so with an ostrich feather quill, nearly two feet long, and dyed the deepest shade of emerald.  _ Slytherins _ , Harry thought.  _ Ridiculous to have that much house loyalty, this far out of school _ ; yet no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he remembered he had painted his own door at Grimmauld Place a Gryffindor red, an the knocker gold. 

Next to Draco was a large pile of envelopes, meticulously stacked, and an even larger… tome, or portfolio, Harry thought, with bits of paper sticking sideways from the edges, bookmarking certain pages. It was open to a page about halfway through the book, and Harry saw the completed wedding invitation with the rabbits;  _ that must be the original _ , Harry surmised, and he turned to look back at the quills, which had been spelled to replicate it. 

As his back was turned, he heard Draco’s chair shove away from his desk. 

“Potter,” Draco said, surprised. “I lost track of the time. I’m sorry I wasn’t at the door.” 

“That’s alright,” said Harry. “Your mother let me in.”

“My - my mother.” Draco said. “She was - she was out of her room?”

“Yes,” said Harry, his eyes narrowing. “What, do you keep her shut up in her room?”

“No - well, yes. For her own safety. She… excuse me. Just a moment. I have to…” and Draco swept from the room, leaving from a door to the left of the desk. He snapped it shut loudly, then snapped it back open again, strode back to the desk, picked up his portfolio, and then left the room a second time. 

While he was gone, Harry wandered around a bit. There was a mezzanine level behind the desk, and Harry strolled carefully up the steps, glancing at the door and hoping Draco wouldn’t catch him snooping. 

At the top was what could be described as a loft apartment. The space was at least clean, unlike the rest of the manor, but that was about the only good thing that could be said of it. A fold-out bed had been shoved into a corner, with dingy looking sheets and a manky old blanket on top of it.  _ Is this where Draco sleeps?  _ Harry thought, as he was seized by a sudden urge to bring him one of the cushy mattresses and bed sets he had lying around Grimmauld place. 

Next to the cot was an overturned wooden crate serving as a nightstand. A large candlestick sat on top of it, along with a high stack of books. Harry got closer to them. They were all written by the same author - Jane Austen. Harry vaguely remembered that Aunt Petunia had bought a boxed set of them once, when he was about eight, but gave up on them, claiming they were too boring. Draco didn’t seem to find these boring - they were dog eared, the corners of various pages folded over. One book was open -  _ Pride and Prejudice _ , he saw at the top of a page - and he also saw that Draco had littered notes in the margins in much the same flowery script he had used on the letter he sent to Harry. 

Behind the nightstand was a wardrobe. One of its doors stood open, and Harry saw two white shirts, identical to the one Draco was wearing today, with the pie crust collar and the ribbon tied through the fabric at the throat. He was itching to open the door and see what was in the drawers on the bottom, but rifling through Draco’s underwear was a bit too creepy, even for him. 

Deciding he’d rather like to avoid getting caught in Draco’s bedroom, and he hurried back down to Draco’s desk. Why, when he had a manor more or less to himself, he was choosing to live in what amounted to little more than the cupboard Harry had slept in as a child, Harry couldn’t guess, but he filed the information away in his head for later perusal. 

It wasn’t another two minutes before Draco came striding back through the library’s side door. He carried the portfolio close to his chest, held fast up against the white fabric of his shirt. Today, he wore not the severe tunic and black robes Harry had seen him in on Friday, but a simple pair of tight black breeches, with boots underneath them. They clicked tidily as Draco walked back towards Harry and sat down at the desk. 

“Well. That’s done. Let’s get this over with, Potter, shall we?”

“Sure,” said Harry. “I’m, er -” he pulled out his form from his pocket and cast an unshrinking charm on it. “I’m meant to ask you some questions about your daily activities.”

“Fire away,” said Draco, plucking up the emerald quill from his desk and returning to his work.

Harry found himself frowning and smiling at the same time. “Are you… going to be working for all our interviews?”

“Why not?” asked Draco, his eyes not leaving the parchment in front of him. “I have three orders due this week, and the bride for this one is a nightmare. She picked rabbits for her invitation. Rabbits. They should have been harpies.” 

“It’s just -” Harry watched Draco’s hands working feverishly above the parchment, and momentarily lost his train of thought. “Most people tend to pay more attention to their probationary interviews.” 

“Right,” said Draco, still not looking at him. “Well, I must say, you are far less terrifying than the future Mrs. Lloyd-Jones, so forgive me if I remain focused on my work.”

“Ah - yes, that’s one of my first questions, actually,” said Harry. “How much time do you spend per week on your employment?”

“Approximately eighty five hours, not counting meals,” said Draco matter-of-factly, finishing the envelope’s address with a flourish and setting it aside. He picked up the next one and refreshed the ink in his emerald colored quill in one smooth motion. 

Harry wrote down his response. “That’s an awful lot of time to spend on wedding stationary. Don’t you get… I don’t know. Burnt out?”

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery,” Draco said, distractedly. 

“And er- what do you do in your spare time?” 

“See for yourself,” said Draco, his eyes twitching up at the ceiling. “I paint. Sometimes I make sculptures in the garden. You’re welcome to go see them, on your way out.” 

“I never knew you were so accomplished in school.”

“I wasn’t,” said Draco. “I’ve had several years of house arrest to develop my hob-  _ fuck _ ,” he said, as his quill blotted the paper. He took out his wand and set the envelope on fire, watching it burn with a manic satisfaction. 

“I like the fresco you’ve done on the ceiling,” said Harry. “Although I rather think my nose is a bit bigger than you’ve drawn it.”

“It’s not,” said Draco, finally looking up. He stared at Harry intently, the fire from the parchment before him lighting up his pale features. “But you’ve certainly gained some weight since I painted you.” 

Harry scoffed. “That’s not very nice. I’m offended.”

“You shouldn’t be,” said Draco, vanishing the ashes and starting over with a new envelope. “It suits you.”

Harry didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he turned quickly back to his form. “What about substance use? Do you drink alcohol? Use any potions?”

“Yes and yes,” said Draco. He reached up to his own head and plucked out a strand of his hair. “Here. Test it if you’d like. Everything I take is legal.”

“That, er, won’t be necessary,” said Harry, though on second thought, he could imagine Robards practically salivating over the chance to run an analysis on Draco’s hair.

“Potter, just take it. Dawlish took a strand of it every month.”

“That was when you were under house arrest, and it was for your own safety. We assume people in that program are a higher risk to themselves, and we turn it over to St. Mungo’s - the Auror department doesn’t process -”

“I’m not stupid, Potter,” said Draco, his left hand outstretched towards him, his right hand still writing away. “I know you want it. Have it. Consider it a special gift.”

Harry felt unsettled; did Draco know Harry was clandestinely investigating him? How could he? Still, Robards would like to have that hair, and if Harry took it, and the analysis proved Draco was telling the truth, it would keep Robards off his back, and Draco safe. Making a show of shrugging, as if he was indifferent, Harry took the hair and placed it in a vial he unshrunk from the breast pocket of his Auror robes. 

“What places do you plan to visit this week outside of your home?”

“Nowhere,” said Draco. “I’m a pariah.” He chortled humorously under his breath. “Could you imagine what would happen if I turned up in Diagon Alley? Getting spat upon would be the least of my worries.”

“You’re not a pariah,” said Harry, feeling some cross between pity and loyalty that puzzled him deeply. 

“Don’t be stupid, Potter. I know my place. It’s not all bad. Society needs pariahs. ‘What will we do without the barbarians?’”

Harry stared at him, uncomprehending. 

“It’s  _ Greek _ , Potter, it’s - oh, for fuck’s sake, it doesn’t matter. I communicate with my solicitor and my clients via floo or email. Pansy and I see each other in my garden once a week or so for tea, which turns into dinner and cocktails, which turns into us both stumbling drunk through the woods at the edge of the property. I eat with my mother in her room at noon. I have my groceries delivered. That’s it. That’s where I plan to go this week.” 

“Are you still dating Pansy, then?” asked Harry, with what he was surprised to find was genuine curiosity. 

“What? No. I thought everyone knew...well, Foucault would say it’s a modern construct anyway,” Draco said dismissively, as if that made any sense whatsoever. 

“Sorry,  _ what _ is a modern construct?” Harry asked, his curiosity vanishing under a wave of frustration. Draco had clearly spent the last five years refining new ways of being a pompous arse. 

“ _ Homosexuality,  _ Potter. Jesus. Ever open a book? Were you dragged up in a barn?”

“More or less,” Harry said. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Draco. “What else do you need? I made a copy of my business records. I assume you’ll want to see those at some point. I make a staggering amount of money.” Draco gestured to a file at the edge of his desk with a neat stack of papers tucked inside. 

Again, Harry felt discomfited. Draco was behaving as if he was under investigation, as if he  _ knew _ Harry had been assigned to watch him with more scrutiny than was strictly the purview of a probationary Auror. Harry’s instinct was telling him to decline the papers, let Draco see him turn them down, let him trust him - but wouldn’t that be deceptive, would that allow Draco to incriminate himself in some way? At least these papers had been prepared in advance, in all likelihood by Draco’s solicitor. 

“Alright,” said Harry, deciding. “I don’t need them for your file, but it can’t hurt, in case questions come up later.”

“Yes,” said Draco wryly. “Questions.” 

Harry cast about for a change of topic. They were finished with the questions on his Auror form. “Why is your mother so thin?” he asked, unthinkingly, and then felt immediately like a total arse. 

“That’s none of your concern,” said Draco, firmly. He stood up from the table and picked up his portfolio. “ _ I _ am in the probation program.  _ She  _ is not, and she’s not your concern. Are we finished here?”

“Sorry - I just, she doesn’t look good, Draco. Do you think she needs… we could take her to St. Mungo’s, if you’d like. Or bring someone here,” he said, helplessly. 

“That won’t be necessary,” said Draco, turning his back and sweeping towards the door. “I’ve been taking care of her for five years, alone, and I’ve done perfectly well.” He opened the door and glanced back towards Harry. “Are we finished?”

“Yes,” croaked Harry, feeling like his entire foot was shoved down his throat. 

“Then you are dismissed,” said Draco haughtily, as if  _ Harry _ was the one on probation, and he slammed the door shut behind him. 

\-------------------------------

Harry returned to the Auror office that afternoon, submitted Draco’s hair and financial records to Evidence, and then sat down at his desk to write his preliminary report, which included all the details of the manor he’d observed, the evidence Draco had volunteered, and the notes from his interview. He was looking forward to glowing praise from Robards at their next all-staff meeting. Even he couldn’t overlook the fact that Harry had already got his hands on everything he’d asked for, and more. 

Twenty minutes after he’d filed the report, Robards’ office door banged open, and the Head Auror came stalking out, his face puce with rage. 

“Potter!” he shouted, reaching Harry’s cubicle. He was clutching the report in his hand. He must have been waiting for it - all reports from the Auror department were filed magically into a towering inbox sitting atop Robards’ desk in the order they were received, so Draco’s interview report would have populated at the very bottom. Robards would have had to be waiting for it, checking on it, to have found it this quickly, and Harry felt a bit queasy at the knowledge that Robards was giving Draco such constant scrutiny. 

“What’s this?”

“My preliminary report,” said Harry, blandly. “I’ll file the full thing once I’ve gone through his owls for the week.”

“You submitted his financial records to Evidence,” said Robards. 

“I did,” said Harry, still just as bland, but feeling his hackles rise. 

“Any particular reason you didn’t run them by me first?”

“Because you’re not the Office of Evidence,” said Harry. “Sir. And financial records are evidence.”

“Anything you find in that Manor comes by me first, is that understood?”

“Is that the new office protocol? All evidence goes through the head Auror?”

“It’s the new protocol on your case, Potter.” 

“I didn’t realize you had the authority to change department protocol on a case-by-case basis.”

Robards was nearly shaking now, he was so angry at Potter. “This is my department, and I’ll run it how I bloody well please.”

“It’s the  _ Ministry’s _ department,” said Harry, standing now and stepping closer to Robards, “and I will follow the  _ Ministry’s  _ rules. Every scrap of paper, every teacup, every toenail that I find in the Manor is going to Evidence first, because that’s the rule, and if you don’t like me following the rules, you can take it up with Kingsley.”

“You weren’t much of a rule-follower on your werewolf assignment, Potter. Half the evidence you submitted is inadmissible. Garbage. And your probationary report… it says here Malfoy is claiming he’s not leaving the Manor.”

“I have no evidence to suggest that Draco  _ Black _ is leaving Malfoy Manor at this time,” said Harry, nearly breathless.

“Find. It.” Robards teeth were clenched. “He is leaving the Manor.”

“He’s not.” 

“Yes, he is, Potter, and you’ll tell me when, and you’ll tell me why, or you’ll be fired from this department.” 

Robards turned on his heel and left. Harry sank back into his chair and banged his head hard, twice, on his desk, by way of not screaming in frustration. 


	3. I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enticements: There's a tiny bit of sex in this.

CHAPTER 3

Late Friday afternoon, Harry was still glued to his desk. 

He’d been so looking forward to Friday afternoons off. His plan had been to come in early, mop up his report by reading through Draco’s owl, email and floo communications, and then leave after lunch for a relaxing afternoon at home. 

As it happened, he had underestimated the volume of Draco’s weekly communication. 

Evidence had filing clerks that were responsible for intercepting and duplicating communications on surveillance operations. He had asked the clerk in charge of Draco’s documentation to compile it for him and deliver it Thursday evening so that it would be waiting for him first thing Friday morning. When he walked in and saw what amounted to a phone book in front of him, he despaired. 

He was almost done with what had to be one of the most dreadfully boring days of his existence. How Draco managed to keep up with this amount of correspondence, he couldn’t imagine, though with all the books so lovingly cared for in Draco’s library, he wouldn’t be surprised if Draco had a speed-reading ability of some kind. 

Still, the volume of mail he received was staggering. No wonder he spent eighty five hours a week on his work. And every bit of it was so dreadfully dull - order forms, receipts, contracts, lists of names and addresses a thousand lines long, suggestions for custom work, etc etc. By the end of his eight hour marathon reading session, Harry knew more than he had ever wanted to about custom stationary. 

Draco had been right about one thing - he did make an absolutely staggering amount of money. A single order for invitations - _ just the invitations, _ not the outer and inner envelopes, the postage on the envelopes, the calligraphy on the outer and inner envelopes, the RSVP cards, the RSVP envelopes, the calligraphy on the RSVP envelopes, the postage on the RSVP envelopes, the ceremony programs, OR the dinner menus - was two thousand pounds. For a full package, Draco’s clients were spending upwards of ten thousand pounds a piece, and Draco had said he had three orders due this week. 

He was doing thirty thousand pounds of business a week.  _ A week _ . 

Harry’s head hurt just thinking about it. Not the money, but the work - the incomprehensible amount of logistical planning and documentation that was required to advertise, manufacture, address, and receive payment for custom wedding invitations. On top of that, Draco was responsible for the artistic direction of the stationary, designing specially ordered illustrations and layouts for the invitations. He had sample forms he sent out with various fonts he offered; it looked like he had personally developed around four dozen fonts and taught himself to write in each of them. And then, somehow or another, he was training his quills to magically print all the invitations and a great deal of the addresses on the envelopes. 

Who was helping him do this? Certainly not his mother, and from his communications, it appeared he hadn’t hired any outside help whatsoever. 

Harry had been impressed, seeing Draco’s remarkable clothing at Grimmauld Place and the fresco Draco had painted in his “spare time”, with Draco’s artistic talents, but his organizational abilities beggared description. He wished he could show someone who would appreciate it… Hermione. He wished he could show Hermione. 

Even she would be bored to tears by most of it. And Harry was going to have to do this  _ every week _ , sort through it and put the highlights in his report. 

The one bright spot were the floo letters Draco sent to owls he received from Pansy Parkinson. They weren’t really very interesting - in fact, Harry couldn’t make heads or tails of some of them - but at least they weren’t orders or receipts or portfolio sample forms. 

She and Draco were pen pals, it appeared, and owled and flooed each other at least three times a week. Draco’s letters to her were dryly witty and peppered with asides about literature and history Harry couldn’t interpret. Pansy’s were even harder to understand - they were full of inside jokes, probably dating from their school days, that Harry wasn’t privy to: 

“I hope the new quill I sent you was  _ your preferred shade of green _ _ , _ Draco. Make a comparison and let me know if I need to order another one.” 

And then in the owl sent on Wednesday: 

“I hope the quill is working alright? I think I’ll begin sending you grey quills as well; I know you think  _ grey and green look so fetching together. _ ”

Next to this last comment, Pansy had drawn a face, smiling impishly, as if she was making fun of Draco - though what for, Harry couldn’t imagine. 

Draco’s reply to her didn’t mention the quills at all, but Pansy was back at it again Thursday morning, the same impish little face in the margin of her letter: “Did you see the newspaper this morning, Draco? I’ll save a clipping for you; I know you’ll want to keep a copy.” 

Draco’s reply to this last was short: “If you send me a copy, I’ll burn it. Fuck you. Love, Draco”. 

Harry was curious enough about this exchange that he fetched  _ The Prophet _ from the office rubbish bin. There was nothing special about it. Kingsley had made a speech on Wednesday about Elvish welfare, and there was a picture of him standing in front of a few of the Aurors on the front page. Harry had been there. It hadn’t been a particularly interesting speech, but maybe Draco was concerned about the rights of freed elves. Why Pansy was teasing him about it, and why it made Draco curse her, Harry couldn’t apprehend. 

In any event, none of the correspondence was incriminating in the least. Harry had a jolly good time noting that in the report, which he fervently wished he could file straight up Robards’ arse, instead of his inbox. The report disappeared with a “pop” from Harry’s outbox, and he bounced off home, looking forward to a well-deserved nap before the pub. 

\---------------------------

Harry was dreaming. 

He was back at Malfoy Manor, sitting before Draco’s desk, but instead of sitting in the chair he’d been in on Tuesday morning, he was reclining on a chaise lounge. It was night. The windows of the library were inky black. There was no moon.

Draco sat at his desk. He was writing. His great green ostrich quill was twitching away, and Draco’s free hand occasionally gave it a stroke, running his fingers through its soft feathers. He hummed to himself while he worked, dipping the nib into the ink, writing, petting the feathers, petting himself…

Draco had stopped writing, and now he was running the quill across his face, across his neck, his… his chest, which in Harry’s dream was exceedingly well-built. Harry had a dawning realization that the dream version of Draco in front of him was shirtless. 

Harry looked down. He was shirtless too. He was naked, in fact, but he could hardly see either of them; it was so dark, and there was only starlight coming through the windows. 

Draco was writing again. Harry could hear the scratch of the quill. He looked back up, just as Draco stuck the nib of his quill into the ink, raised it to his mouth, and licked it. 

Harry gasped. He’d felt it. When Draco licked the quill…

Draco licked it again. And again. Harry was paralyzed by pleasure. He was stuck here, in a chaise lounge in Draco’s library, and Draco was licking his… was licking his…

Draco raised his eyes to Harry’s, and Harry came. 

He woke up, covered in it. 

“Fuck,” he said, groping for his wand and trying not to spread the sticky mess any further into his bedclothes. 

He looked at the clock on the wall. It was half past eight already. He’d been asleep for three hours. 

Dragging on his trousers, Harry stumbled down to the floo. Trying his best to put his bizarre dream out of his mind, Harry shouted “The Leaky Cauldron”, and stepped into the green flames. 

Neville was slumped over at the table. He had about five butterbeers and two firewhiskey shots stacked beside him, and in front of him was a small, velvet box, colored red. 

“Neville! You’ve done it!” Harry exclaimed happily. 

“Not yet,” said Ron, slapping Neville on the back. “He's only just bought it, haven’t you Neville?”

Neville groaned, sounding at once morose and terrified. And drunk. Very drunk. 

“He’s just trying to work up a little courage,” said Cho, in a stage whisper. “He’s worried Hannah will chuck him if he asks her too soon.” 

“She’s so bloody pretty, of course she’ll chuck me,” said Neville. “Have you seen me? I’m like the wrong end of a fairy tale. I’m the frog. That’s me.”

“Neville, you’re not making much sense mate,” said Ron. “Doesn’t matter, let the rock do the talking for you. It’s huge.”

Ron turned the box so Harry could see the ring inside of it, and Harry agreed that it appeared Neville may have overcompensated. “That is… wow, Neville, she’ll love it.” 

“The ring doesn’t matter,” said Hermione sensibly. “You’ve been dating for years, Neville. She’ll be _so_ happy. You should go ask her at once.” Neville hiccoughed loudly. “Er.. maybe in a few hours. Or tomorrow.”

Harry slid onto the bench next to her, and she budged over. “Hiya, Hermione.”

“Harry. How’s work? The Draco thing?”   


“It’s…” Harry tried to shove away the memory of his recent dream. “Strange.”

“Strange? Are things very difficult with Robards?”

“No - I mean, yes, but that’s not - it’s just strange, is all. His house is a wreck. He’s making thirty thousand pounds a week illustrating wedding invitations, his mother’s dying - “

“His mother’s  _ dying _ ?” said Hermione, her tone piercing. 

“Quiet,” said Harry, looking around. He didn’t want to advertise Draco’s extremely complicated life problems to the whole table. “She might be the least weird part of this. His house is falling apart, and he’s made himself into a one person printing press, and his clothes are amazing -”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “That  _ is  _ interesting, Harry.”

Harry felt himself turning red. “They  _ are _ , you should see them, it’s like he hand sewed them or something. They’ve got… what do you call the little stitches?”

“Embroidery?” Hermione said, more laughter creeping into her voice. 

“ _ Yes _ , and shut it, they’ll hear us - “

“Hear us what? Talking about Draco’s pretty clothes?”

Harry suppressed the urge to clap his hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have told you a thing.” 

“No, Harry, I’m sorry. What did you say about his mother? Is she not well?”

“She’s not, no. I think she’s… I dunno, got cancer, or something.”

“Cancer? That’s very unlikely.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because witches and wizards so rarely get cancer. It’s why they live so much longer than Muggles; they’re not susceptible to the same sorts of diseases. Why do you think Narcissa has cancer?”

“She’s… she’s losing her hair, and she weighs nothing. She was so sick she could hardly stand up.” 

“Hmm,” said Hermione, taking a sip of the cocktail in front of her. “I wonder if she’s doing it to herself.”

Harry frowned, not understanding. “What d’you mean?” 

“Haven’t you ever heard of people doing things to themselves? Hurting themselves when they’re upset?”

Harry nodded slowly. “There have been a few people we’ve had under observation in the DMLE cells. We had to keep sharp things away from them. And Draco… he said he couldn’t leave her alone, he practically ran out of the room when he realized she was off by herself.”

“Right,” said Hermione. “Maybe she hasn’t handled things very well. She’s been shut up in that house all this time, and she wasn’t on house arrest, was she?”

“No,” said Harry. “Actually I think she got off with a fine, after the trials.”

“And then, with what happened with Lucius…”

_ Oh. _ Harry had forgotten about Lucius. How could he have forgotten about Lucius? That had been one of the worst weeks for the ministry since the war, when a criminal in their supervisory House Arrest program had…

“You need to report it, Harry. If she’s not well, you need to report it to Robards.”

“I can’t do that. Robards would find a way to blame -”

“RIGHT!” said Neville. He stood, swallowed a potion he pulled out of his pocket, looked for a moment as if he was going to vomit, and picked up his coat from the back of his chair. “I’m doing it.”

“YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, NEVILLE!” shouted Ron. “GOD’S SPEED!”

Neville saluted him and walked swiftly out the door. Halfway there, he realized he’d forgotten the ring, and doubled back. 

Harry remembered something important.

“Neville!” He drew a business card out of his pocket. “If you need someone to do your invitations, I know just the person.”

Neville smiled and took the card on the way out the door. “Thanks, Harry.”

\---------------------------

The following Tuesday, Harry was back at the Manor. He knocked on the door, half expecting Narcissa to meet him. No one answered, so Harry decided to take a walk through the gardens and see if he could find Draco there.

He walked for what felt like ages. The Manor was huge, engaged columns breaking up long stretches of marble, once white, but now scarred with the dark magic remnants Harry had noticed upon his first visit to the house. The windows were all classically framed, their architraves cracking under the strain of ill-use that the rest of the house had surrendered to. By the time Harry reached the western wing of the house, most of them had been boarded up entirely, and Harry guessed that this part of the house hadn’t been entered for many years.

Rounding the outer edge of the property, Harry walked for some time through a thicket which had reclaimed what had once been part of a terrace or pavilion. After blasting his way with his wand through a batch of nettles, he emerged into a surprisingly pristine baroque garden, the hedges all trimmed in lovely rows, interspersed with fragrant roses and precisely trained vines.

Harry shouldn’t have been surprised. Really, considering his previous encounters with Draco’s clothes, with the fresco, with his penmanship, for fuck’s sake, it should not shock him that Draco was a perfectionist about his garden as well.

Harry had been to the pictures a few years back, and seen a rerun of  _ Edward Scissorhands _ with Ginny, when they’d still been dating. The topiaries here were just like they were in the film, only more splendid, and whimsical, and there were also… 

_ Oh Merlin _ , Harry thought. Draco  _ had  _ mentioned he’d trained himself to sculpt. 

Harry walked past a bush impersonating a twelve-foot-long dragon and saw a life-sized marble sculpture of a man in Greek armor, holding a shield and a spear. He was rendered at the height of action, as if he was just about to launch the javelin through the leafy serpent that faced him, ten meters downfield. Harry looked down at the plinth. The name  _ Achilles _ was carved into the stone, in (of course) elaborate cursive lettering. 

More statues faced the serpent, placed at precise angles along a large circle. Harry walked past them, one by one.  _ Aeneas _ , read the next.  _ Hercules, Beowulf, Henry V, Spartacus.  _ They were all armored up and ready for a fight, all except the one at twelve o’clock, behind the snake’s head. That one was a bald, grumpy looking old man. Harry walked up to the plinth it sat on.  _ Winston Spencer Churchill _ , it read. Harry smiled. He’d always liked his lessons on Churchill, in Muggle school. 

Angry voices called him out of his reverie. Draco was in the garden, one level up from the circle of statues on a terrace, and Harry happened upon him just as he was having an argument with Narcissa. 

“No, please don’t. For the last time. He’s not interested.” Draco said this sharply, but over his shoulder. Harry could see, from his vantage point at the bottom of a white stone stairway, that he held a hammer and chisel, and stood in front of a massive block of white marble. He was focused intently on knocking bits of it away with the chisel. Why he didn’t use magic to do it, Harry couldn’t guess, but he supposed the exercise must be worth it. Draco’s sleeves were rolled up, and his forearms were practically obscene.  _ No one should be allowed to get that many muscles on their forearms _ , thought Harry.  _ It’s indecent, is what it is. _

“I rather think he may be, if you would only let me -”

“For the last time,  _ no _ , and he’ll be here any minute, so if you would please clear that away so I can go let him in.”

“I let myself in, if that’s alright,” said Harry. Draco startled at the sound of his voice and dropped his chisel. It fell onto a book Harry noticed was lying at the foot of the stone - Draco’s calligraphy portfolio.  _ Why’s he brought it out here?  _ Harry wondered. 

“Mr. Potter,” said Narcissa. Her hair, in the full sun, appeared even thinner, like a diseased halo atop her wasting frame. She looked like a dying angel - beautiful, but terribly sick, and frail. He wondered again what could be wrong with her. Surely she wouldn’t have inflicted this on herself. 

“I’m sorry, my mother was just taking this with her,” Draco said, gesturing to the tea service on a small iron table. 

“Don’t,” said Harry, eyeing the crumpets and treacle tart. His previous reticence to eat anything prepared in the Manor evaporated. They looked delicious. “I haven’t had breakfast.”

Narcissa was victorious. “I thought that might be the case,” she said wanly, and fairly collapsed into one of the chairs. “Please, would you have some tea with us while you and my son visit?”

Draco tossed his chisel onto the grass before him. “Mother.”

“Draco,” she said, mockingly. 

Harry took the liberty of pouring himself a cup of tea and taking a crumpet. He offered one to Narcissa, and she accepted, smearing it delicately with raspberry jam. As she brought it to her mouth, Draco made a tiny, strangled noise, and then sat down next to them. 

“Fine,” said Draco. “If this is how it’s going to be.”

“It is,” said Narcissa. 

Harry finished the rest of his crumpet and pulled the form from his pocket. “Should we begin? I’d like to get back before lunch, I’m supposed to meet Ron and Cho.”

Draco nodded glumly. “Get on with it, then.”

They went through roughly the same questions as last week, Harry asking Draco his plans for leaving the house (none), his work obligations (only one order this week, hence the recreational sculpture practice), his plans outside of work (obviously, Potter, I’m working on a project, you can see for yourself). Narcissa ate two crumpets, then three, then a whole treacle tart. 

“What are you sculpting?”

“Can’t you guess?” Draco asked, sneering around his tart. “I’ve got a fairly obvious theme going on in the garden.” 

“Er.” Harry couldn’t guess. He was terrible at situations that required him to make a cultural inference, and Draco communicated in a code he’d never understood. History, and myth. It was all Greek to Harry. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, to be honest.”

“They’re all heroes,” said Draco. He looked away from Harry, out to the circle of statues surrounding the snake. “This is the last one. He’ll go next to Churchill, down there,” he said, pointing. 

Harry didn’t know how to respond. It wouldn’t do any good to comment on how beautiful the sculptures were; Harry wasn’t qualified to say whether art was good or bad. He’d never had any taste, and Draco surely knew it. “I didn’t realize you had an interest in heroes,” said Harry, for lack of anything else intelligent to say.

“It passes the time,” Draco said quietly. “Doesn’t do much in the way of beating back the loneliness. If only I had the powers of Pygmalion, I’d find sculpture much more interesting.”

That didn’t mean anything to Harry, but it evidently meant something to Narcissa, who blushed and abruptly set down her saucer and tea cup. 

“Draco, you know how I feel about those sorts of jokes.” She rose from her chair, unsteadily. “I think I’ll go have a lie down. It was good of you to stop by, Harry,” Narcissa said, as if Harry had made a social visit, and walked off in the direction of the usable portion of the house. Draco watched her until he saw her open a small door on the first floor, then took out his wand and cast a locking charm on it. 

“I apologize for her imposition,” said Draco. 

“I meant to talk to you about that,” said Harry. “About her.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“You keep saying that, but this  _ is  _ my concern...with what happened here, I think I’d better… she’s not well, Draco.”

“I know,” he said, threading his fingers through his hair. “But it’s humiliating, for both of us, and I’d prefer if you’d let it remain a private family matter.”

“That’s the thing,” said Harry. “I’m an Auror, and I’m responsible for the safety of the people I encounter on duty, whether or not they’re in the probationary program.”

“Right,” said Draco, as if resigned to what was coming next. 

“I won’t report her,” said Harry, and Draco looked up, surprised. “At least, not right away. I’m afraid…” he stopped, unsure of how much to tell Draco about how much scrutiny he was under from the Auror office. “I won’t report. Yet. Not if you tell me what’s wrong with her.”

“What isn’t wrong with her?” asked Draco, looking wretched, as if every word to Harry was costing him immeasurably. “Her husband committed suicide, her house is rotting around her, we’re penniless -” Harry nearly raised the issue of the thirty thousand pounds Draco had taken as payment not a week prior, but remembered that Draco didn’t know he was reading his mail. “She hasn’t any friends left in the world, or family, except me, and I’m condemned to die alone, heirless, and unloved. She thinks she’s to blame, and she’s punishing herself.”

Harry wanted to reach out to him, inexplicably, to place a hand around his shoulders, and tell him he wasn’t alone, he wasn’t unloved, he was remarkable, if people could only see his work, the things he made… but instead he asked him, “How?”

“She isn’t eating,” Draco said ruefully. “She was doing… other things. But I’ve made sure she doesn’t do that anymore. She’s not in any immediate danger.”

“Yes, she is,” said Harry. “She’s losing her hair, Draco. She’s weak. If she’s starving herself, she could -”

“ _ I know _ ,” said Draco. “I’m aware. Nothing helps.”

“Why haven’t you gotten her a healer? I could bring one from St. Mungo’s, if you’re worried about having her out in public. They could come here. I could make them.”

“I’ve brought her healers,” said Draco. “What do you think I’m spending my money on, interior decorators? I’ve brought them from St. Mungo’s, from the continent, from a Muggle hospital. The best, Potter. They’ve all had potions, and pills, and therapies. I even sent her away, to a place in America. I chartered a private airplane for her because I couldn’t take her through the airport. I’ve done everything, and it works, and then it doesn’t.” He was practically in tears, and his hands were shaking. “Those crumpets she ate with you are more food than I’ve seen her eat in days.”

“Well, that’s a start,” said Harry. He very nearly covered one of Draco’s trembling hands with his own. For all their shaking, they still looked so strong, callused from where Draco had been wielding his hammers from the years of sculpting. “Why did she eat so much today, do you think?”

Draco leaned back in the chair, exasperated. “It was a bribe.”

“A bribe?”

“Yes. She bribed me. She’s so bloody manipulative. She wants me to have friends, besides Parkinson, and she thought if she got us to sit down to tea together, we’d be bosom buddies, and go on holiday together, and all my problems would be solved.”

“So,” said Harry, “what you’re saying is, if I come round to tea a few times a week and let your mother feed me treacle tarts, I’d be saving her life.” 

Draco shook his head. “Please don’t feel obligated. She’s not your responsibility, and you can’t solve several decades of on-and-off anorexia with tea.”

“Well, I could at least try,” said Harry, sucking the last bit of tart off his fingers. “I like saving people. And treacle tart.” 

“Naturally,” said Draco. “The Saviour.”

“Mostly, it’s the treacle tart I’m after.” 

“Surely.”

Harry stood to leave. “You never told me what you’re sculpting.”

Draco scowled. “It’s none-”

“Of my concern. Right,” said Harry, rolling his eyes. “Who’s Pygmalion? Am I allowed to ask that?”

“Anyone with any raising already knows,” said Draco haughtily, and he walked back to his unfinished block of stone. 

\------------------------

“Any new evidence for Robards?” Ron asked, his mouth full of chips. He was staring down at a chessboard, his lunch next to him on the cafeteria table, when Harry walked in.

“No,” said Harry, scowling. “What about you, any new leads on the potions case?”

“Huh?” said Ron. He was lost in thought. Cho’s pawns were crowding one of his bishops alarmingly. 

“The potions case. Did you find the ringleader?”

“Nah, still on stakeout.” Ron pushed his chips in Harry’s direction. “What’s Malfoy up to?”

Harry ignored the chip, instead stealing Ron’s pickle. “Sculpture,” he said.

“Sculpture?” said Ron, prodding his knight into action. The horse looked back at him and shook his head disapprovingly. 

“Yeah, he’s er… he’s talented.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean he’s talented,” said Harry, not able to say just what he meant. “He’s been shut up in that Manor for years, and he’s had nothing else to do except read, and paint, and like, trim the hedges.”

“Ha!” said Cho, capturing Ron’s last bishop. “Never would have thought Malfoy was artistic at school. He always struck me as a snooty patron of the arts type.” 

“Guess you can do all sorts of things, when you’re a miserable sod who hasn’t any friends,” said Ron. 

Harry felt uncomfortable for a reason he couldn’t quite name. “Right, I’ve got to go. I want to look up something in the Ministry library before I go home.”

\----------------------

Harry didn’t have the least idea where to start, so he asked the clerk.

“Pygmalion? Greek mythology.” The clerk wrote down the name of the author he’d be looking for, and gave Harry a strangely lurid smile. 

“Thanks,” said Harry. He tried to ignore the niggling feeling of shame at the back of his head that he was so outclassed by Draco he was looking up a joke he’d told in a book. 

He found the correct bookshelf, and saw a green book with the name “Ovid” on the spine. Picking it up, he flipped through the pages until he found a chapter labelled “Pygmalion.” He began to read. 

It was poetry, and Harry had always had a hard time with poetry, but this was different. It was… basically porn, Harry realized, and suddenly he paid much closer attention. Now he knew why Narcissa was blushing at tea. 

Fuck. 

Harry shut the book and practically ran out of the library. He couldn’t meet the laughing gaze of the clerk as he left. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please come say hi on [Tumblr ](https://cassiopeiasshadow.tumblr.com/)


	4. I have to turn my head until the darkness goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more sex in this.

CHAPTER 4

Of course, that night he had another horrible dream. It was awful. 

_ The worst _ . 

It began in total blackness. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. 

Faintly, he could hear the tapping of a hammer, a few inches in front of his face. The tapping got louder, and louder, and he could feel the surface of his skin exposed to air. First his throat, then his nose, and then, finally, his eyes. 

He couldn’t move, but he could see. Draco was chiseling away at the stone - was chiseling away at  _ him _ . His shoulders came out of the rock next, and his legs, and finally his feet. Draco stood back and looked at him.  _ Really  _ looked at him, looked him all over. 

Harry wanted to reach out again, just as he had this morning in the garden, but he couldn’t - he was frozen in stone, in the white marble on the Malfoy Manor pavilion. 

Draco touched the cold stone of his arm, and Harry felt it come to life, blood flooding into the extremity. He could move it now that it was alive, and he reached out to cradle Draco’s face, to caress the sharp line of his jaw. Draco shut his eyes, enraptured. 

Harry used his fingers to pet Draco for a long moment, and Draco seemed disinclined to do anything but allow himself to be touched. Harry felt himself wanting to beg, wanting to pant, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He put all his desperation into the soft touches he was giving, putting everything he wanted to ask into them. 

Draco finally opened his eyes. He raised his hands to the marble of Harry’s belly. The sun was striking it, and the white stone reflected a gleam onto Draco’s face. His fingers ran over the flat plane of Harry’s abdomen, scattering life into the muscles there. They tensed, quivering, as he explored, unabashed, every bit of Harry that he could find. 

He ran his fingers up to Harry’s shoulders, and Harry let them flex. He’d let them grow as large as he could, but they were still a bit rangy compared to Draco’s, who had built his own physique by literally carving stone. Harry wished more than ever that he could hold him, but he only had one hand free, and Draco was… was tweaking him, on his nipples, and he lost the ability to focus on anything but the nerves alighting under Draco’s strong hands. 

Draco looked up into Harry’s face.  _ Touch my throat _ , thought Harry,  _ let me moan _ , but Draco sank to his knees instead, and kissed the inside of his thighs, whispering sweet things to him, whispering “beautiful,” and “perfect,” and “brave”, kissing closer and closer, until he took Harry’s stone cock into his mouth in one swift motion. 

Harry would have shouted, if he wasn’t immobile, if he wasn’t having  _ literally the worst dream of his life. _ He would have cried, would have babbled, but he couldn’t, and Draco was looking up at him, his eyes tragic with worship, and Harry thought,  _ He likes heroes _ , he thought,  _ he’s worshiping me, he’s on his bloody knees, worshiping my cock -  _

Harry woke up, covered in his own mess. Again. 

\-------------------

  
  


On Friday, Harry had arranged to meet Draco and Narcissa again at four o’clock, but first, he had to get through the full day at the office, trying not to set himself on fire or murder Robards, or both. 

He’d filed his preliminary report on Wednesday, and Robards had lit into him for not including any physical evidence at all this time, and also for not reporting any details about Draco leaving Malfoy Manor, and it was all Harry could do not to strangle the man. Finally, he retreated back to his office, and Harry sat back at his cubicle to read Draco’s mail. 

Aside from the normal guilt he felt at surveilling a man who didn’t deserve it, Harry now had to contend with the very sight of Draco’s handwriting making him semi-hard under the desk. The whole situation was bloody inappropriate; Harry should  _ not  _ have an unrequited… crush, of sorts, for someone in his probationary supervision. He’d be sacked if he acted on it, which of course he wouldn’t; naturally, that only made it more difficult to convince his dick to go soft. By noon, Harry was nearly sobbing in frustration. 

Harry ate a quick midday meal with Neville, who talked about Hannah’s ideas for their upcoming wedding (“less than a year away, I don’t know how we’ll grow all the plants we need for the arrangements,”) so incessantly that Harry’s dick  _ did _ manage to soften up, and Harry returned to his desk determined to keep it that way. 

That’s when he noticed, to his extreme dismay, the stack of Pansy’s letters from the week. They were cheeky, and she was teasing him about something - asking him if he’d bought a ring yet, if he was shopping for country cottages. Harry thought it might relate to a client he had, but he couldn’t be sure. Draco’s answers were all obvious double entendres. They even contained a rather explicit reference to a fling he’d had with Blaise Zabini sixth year, and Harry gave it up as a lost job. 

He finally dragged himself to the apparition point, vowing to himself not to visit the loos and have a quick slash, and then immediately regretting it when Draco opened his front door clad in nothing but knee high boots and tight black breeches. 

“Bugger,” said Draco. “Sorry, I was about to go have a look at the garden, and I lost track of time. Let me - come in, Potter, and I’ll find a shirt somewhere.” 

Harry found himself unable to move. Draco’s chest was just as it had been in Harry’s dream, only bigger.  _ What’s he been doing to himself _ , thought Harry,  _ lugging great piles of rocks across the grounds _ , which of course, Draco had been. 

Draco smirked at him.  _ He knows _ , thought Harry, but he was stuck. 

“Potter. It’s rude to stare,” said Draco, though the smile he gave Harry was kind. “I’ll only be a moment. Mother is in her quarters. Go out to the pavilion and open her door, would you?”

“Sure,” said Harry, and he somehow engaged the muscles in his legs in the correct sequence to get them moving to the back of the house. 

He wasn’t sure where he was going this time, only that the library was in the west wing of the house, the garden due north from the door, so he followed the decrepit corridors as far as he could in that direction, before finally coming to a dead end hallway. He opened the door at the end of it, and found to his surprise what must be five years of discarded ostrich feather quills, each of them the same shade of emerald. 

Harry shut the door and tried the one about five feet back. It opened onto a sunroom, which led to the pavilion. Harry went out to find Narcissa’s door. 

He cast  _ Alohomora _ , and then knocked for good measure. “One moment,” said Narcissa, her voice brighter than the last time Harry had heard it. When she joined him outside, however, she looked as sick as she had done on Tuesday. 

“Good to see you,” said Harry, taking her hand and helping her out to the chairs. Draco sat down shortly afterwards, and they settled into what Harry was afraid was going to be the most awkward tea of his recent memory. 

Without the interview questions as prompts for a conversation, he and Draco had to struggle along under their own steam. Harry was worried they wouldn’t find anything to talk about, but he shouldn’t have been. As it happened, Draco was witty, and clever, and when he wasn’t being an evil little brat like he’d been when they were younger, he was terribly good company. In school, he had done impressions of Harry, which Harry didn’t find especially funny at the time, but now he did one of McGonagall that was  _ devastating _ . 

It was the easiest hour Harry had passed in a year, and Narcissa ate several plates of hors d'oeuvres, much to Draco’s satisfaction. Harry could have happily sat there for another hour, listening to Draco make gentle fun of their professors, but Draco stood up at five o’clock exactly to see him out. 

“I’ve got an appointment, so I’ll have to see you on Tuesday,” said Draco. 

“No matter,” Harry said. Draco stooped to pick up his portfolio from underneath his chair. “New client?” he asked, gesturing to the notebook. 

“No,” said Draco, stooping next to his chair to pick up his portfolio. Harry wondered why he could have needed to bring it all the way out here if he wasn’t planning to meet a client. “Pansy’s coming round, and while I admit to occasional cruelty, I’m not such a bastard that I’d subject you to her.”

Harry laughed. “Sure. Thanks.” He turned to leave, and then he had a brilliant idea. 

“Draco,” he said. “I noticed in one of your closets, you had a stash of green quills.”

“Did you,” said Draco, looking uncharacteristically nervous. His fingers twitched at his side, but he otherwise held himself perfectly still, as if expecting Harry to hit him. “And?”

Harry thought carefully about how to ask for them without revealing too much to Draco about how much he was being watched by the Auror department. “My boss is a real arse, and he’s asking… well, he appreciated that I brought him those records, and the hair, so thanks for that,” said Harry. “He’s trying to meet an evidence quota for this month…”

“Evidence quota? I wasn’t aware the Auror department had an evidence quota.”

“It’s new,” Harry lied. “We need to enter so much evidence every month, and since I’m not on any active cases, it’s been a bit tough to meet it.”

“You want to enter my quills as evidence, to fill a quota, for your arsehole department head,” Draco filled in. 

“That’s right,” said Harry, immensely relieved. 

“Have at it,” said Draco. “You know where they are, you can help yourself to as many as you’d like.”

“Perfect.” 

\---------------------------

Robards’ reaction to the mountain of quills Harry magicked onto his desk Monday morning was everything Harry had hoped it would be. 

“Sir,” said Harry, to a purple-faced Robards in the Monday staff meeting, “you asked me to submit evidence of Draco’s activities directly to  _ you.”  _

“You know very well I meant  _ incriminating _ evidence, Potter. Files, records. Things we can use to convict him.”

_ As if I would ever submit a piece of paper from Malfoy Manor to you, _ thought Harry, knowing Robards would only doctor it to incriminate Draco before turning it over to be processed. That was the beauty of the quills, all five thousand two hundred and twenty eight of them crowding Robards out of his office

“But this is incriminating, sir.” Harry was very proud of himself for maintaining a straight face, even with Neville snorting next to him. “What kind of person would write, exclusively, with green ostrich feathers? He’s clearly mad, sir, and I for one -”

“Meeting adjourned,” said Robards. “Potter, if you don’t come back with some actionable intelligence, it will be your  _ head _ , do you hear me?”

“That sounds an awful lot like asking me to fabricate evidence to preserve my position,” said Harry. “Which I’m happy to resign, if you’re asking me to break the law.”

“I’m asking you to do your job and arrest a Death Eater,” said Robards. “Scum like him belongs in Azkaban.”

Harry was very grateful that Ron dragged him out the door before he did anything to Robards that he would regret later. 

\-----------------------

Harry spent the next season visiting Malfoy Manor two or three times a week. Narcissa was beginning to look more like a person and less… well. Cadaverous. Draco had stopped making much progress on the marble sculpture. A client had asked him to make ice sculptures for a wedding, and Draco was practicing his technique on those instead. 

The weather changed. The Manor’s ancient old trees, lovely in the summer and early autumn, shed their leaves seemingly all at once after a brutal November cold snap. After that, the Manor looked even worse than it had done in August, when Harry had first been to visit. It was dreary, and grey, and the trees all bare looked twisted and unkempt. They had not been tended in years, and their branches grew torturously wild. 

Harry brought it up to Draco, once, in their weekly interview. His question earned Draco’s, by now, predictable response. 

“It’s none of your concern.”

“It is my concern,” said Harry. 

Draco sneered at him, looking up from the envelope he was addressing. It was threatening to snow outside, and the light coming in the window was the same steel grey as his eyes. “Why, because my horticultural welfare is the Auror department’s concern?”

“No, because you came to my house and acted like I lived in a hovel, but your house is covered in leaves and mouse droppings? Why don’t you vanish it? It wouldn’t take more than a minute’s work.”

Draco took a long look at Harry. “You couldn’t possibly understand. That’s the difference between you and me.”

“What, that you’re a snob for no reason, and I’m not?” said Harry, fed up with him.

“No,” said Draco evenly. He dropped his gaze back to his writing. “You deserve a lovely place to live, and I don’t.” 

After that, Harry felt totally out of his depth. There was so much beneath Draco’s surface - talent, pain, self-hatred. There wasn’t anything beneath his own surface. Harry was completely one-dimensional. Draco was right: he  _ couldn’t _ possibly understand him. 

He didn’t even understand what Draco was saying half the time. Just the other day, Harry had been round for tea, and Draco was trying to carve up a block of ice with a chainsaw instead of his wand, but the chainsaw was broken, and they were having a devil of a time trying to fix it. After nearly an hour of tinkering, it roared back to life, and Draco exclaimed, “Ad astra per aspera!”. 

And he was always pointing things out, things he expected Harry to draw meaning from, making asides and comments about what he was reading, or painting, or sculpting, placing special emphasis and watching for Harry’s reaction, but Harry’s reaction was always to draw a total blank and feel like a wally. 

To add to his sense of total bafflement, Pansy Parkinson’s letters were increasingly cryptic. She kept saying things like, “Going on any holidays together? Any plans for romantic evenings?”, and “Hasn’t he taken you to meet his family yet?” Harry couldn’t imagine whom they might refer to. Except. 

Perhaps Draco had a secret boyfriend he hadn’t mentioned. Harry spent several hours examining the wood grain of his desk on a Friday morning once he’d put that together. He knew Draco was never going to be interested in him, with their long and acrimonious history, but he’d felt safe in fantasizing about him. He was all alone at the Manor, no contact with anyone, and he wasn’t dating Pansy. It had been… comforting, in an awful way, to have his crush be so completely isolated. At least, if he couldn’t have him, he didn’t have to contend with competition. 

Worse, Pansy’s teasing was in a written document associated with Draco’s probationary file, meaning Robards saw it and became ever more convinced that Draco was leaving the Manor to conduct an affair while he plotted the murder of innocents. He kept breathing down Harry’s neck in meetings, and when Harry refused for a  _ fifth _ time to admit he’d seen Draco leaving the manor, Robards got fed up and assigned him to Norway for a month, a fucking  _ month _ , right over Christmas. 

It was the most miserable assignment he’d ever been on. Trondheim was dark constantly, with zero daylight and no contact with the outside world while he kept an eye on Troll smugglers. They weren’t hard to catch. Trolls were huge, and Harry had most of the case wrapped up in the space of a week, giving him plenty of time to brood in the dingy flat the ministry had put him up in. 

Christmas eve was perhaps the most depressing holiday he’d spent since the Dursleys. He would give anything to be sitting at the Burrow, exchanging gifts, and when he was done with his surveillance shift, he wandered into a row of shops. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, but it was still dark, as it had been for the last three weeks he’d been in Norway. Shops were still open, and they had little candles lit in the windows. Harry saw a trio of candles in a bookshop, and walked in. 

It occurred to him that he hadn’t bought Draco a Christmas present. When he’d learned he was coming to Norway, he made a quick dash through Diagon Alley and bought presents for Neville, Cho, and all the Weasleys (Hermione included), but he hadn’t spared a thought for Draco and Narcissa. Kicking himself, he decided to make a quick purchase and send it by overnight floo to the Manor. 

Narcissa was easy. Harry bought her a bottle of Akvavit. It was the wizarding kind, and so it came with a hangover potion. Draco was tougher. Thinking he might like a Jane Austen novel, Harry went to the antique book section, looking for an early edition or a collectible. Then, he remembered the only reason he knew Draco liked Jane Austen was that he’d been prowling around in his bedroom, so that was out. 

He somehow wandered into the Norse Mythology section. Harry didn’t know anything about Norse mythology, but he thought Draco might like it, so he found an old book with a brass cover. The brass was worked in some semblance of illuminated manuscript around a massive lightning bolt, which Harry thought might appeal to Draco’s interest in calligraphy. It was about Thor, and something called Valhalla.

When Harry returned to his flat, he sent the gifts to the magical post in Wiltshire with the note “Happy Christmas, HJP,” and then floo called with the Weasley’s until it was time for his night shift. 

He woke up at eight o’clock Christmas evening, having slept a full twelve hours after pulling an overnighter - not that his body noticed, since it was perpetually midnight. There was a pinging noise coming from the fireplace. His floo was locked, since he was on an Auror mission. 

There was a note and a brown paper package waiting for him. He thought it must be from Draco. He opened it. 

Inside was a framed drawing of his godfather, when he was young. Draco must have made it - it was drawn in jet black ink, and signed DB in the bottom right hand corner. Sirius was dressed in a leather jacket, looking very handsome indeed, and was standing next to a large black dog. Underneath, in Draco’s most elaborate handwriting, was the name “Sirius Black III”. Harry felt tears spilling down his face, and he hastily put the frame down, in case they dripped onto the unprotected paper and damaged the portrait. 

He opened the note. It was sealed with black sealing wax, same as Draco’s first letter to him half a year ago, but printed in completely normal handwriting, neat and unimpressive. 

_ Potter, _

_ Thank you for the gift. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I could try, but I doubt you’d really understand.  _

Harry rolled his eyes. Leave it to Draco to call him stupid in a Christmas Card. 

_ I will say this - if anyone living today will go to Valhalla, it will be you. Happy Christmas. _

_ I found a portrait I had done of Sirius years ago in my portfolio, from when I was first practicing illustration. I think it belongs with you more than with me.  _

_ Neville’s been stopping by. Please finish whatever work you’re doing as quickly as possible. Even I’m bored of hearing him talk about his wedding.  _

_ DB _

Harry put the note down and looked out the window. What, exactly, was Valhalla? He could go back to the shop tomorrow and find out. 

Or, better yet, he’d simply ask Draco, the next time he saw him at tea, and Draco could tell him all about it. Perhaps they could read the book together. 

\----------------------------

Returning to London, Harry decided he would find a way to record Draco leaving the Manor in the least incriminating way possible. He shuddered to think where Robards would find to send him next. At least Norway had been cozy. 

He sent Draco and Narcissa a note Sunday afternoon, inviting them to lunch at Grimmauld Place on Monday. That way, Harry could show Robards they’d been out of the Manor and prevent them from incriminating themselves accidentally in one fell swoop. 

Harry suffered through the morning meeting and met them for lunch. It was quite successful - Narcissa stayed for two hours, going through the parlor and the sitting room’s antiques, explaining them all to Draco and Harry, absently munching on the sandwiches Harry had set out for them. Draco still looked like he wanted to come through with a team of carpenters and glaziers and gut the whole place to the studs, but he kept himself from openly sneering. 

In the afternoon staff meeting, Robards was distinctly unimpressed to hear Harry report that Draco and Narcissa had left the manor and come to lunch at his house. 

“That’s not what I’m after, Potter.”

“Yes it is,” said Harry, maliciously. “You asked me to document them leaving the Manor, and I did.”

“I meant for you to document them going somewhere publicly!”

So Friday afternoon, Harry took them to Florean Fortescue’s in Diagon Alley. He ordered them all ice cream sundaes, and didn’t even complain when Draco took bites from Harry’s after he’d finished with his own. 

Monday afternoon, Harry heard from Robards again, insisting that Harry document Draco leaving the Manor, without his mother  _ or _ with an Auror escort, so Harry made an appointment to meet Draco at Twilfitt and Tattings, where Draco had mentioned he would like to get fitted for some robes but preferred not to go alone. 

Harry arrived on time, but stayed under his invisibility cloak. He watched Draco as he appeared at the apparition point in Diagon Alley. Not seeing Harry, he shifted from side to side on his feet, glancing around to check if anyone was about to attack him. Harry felt a pang of pity for him. 

Sympathy, too. Harry was always cautious in public, but for the inverse reason Draco was. Too many people tried to touch him. It made him distinctly uncomfortable. 

Draco walked as quickly as he could into the robes shop. Harry watched him from the window. When Draco had paid and was ready to leave, Harry walked a block away, took off his cloak, and bumped into him coming back out. 

“I’m so sorry, Draco,” Harry said, making a show of being out of breath. “Got here as fast as I could. There was an incident at Hogsmeade. Possible vampire attack. Turned out to be a nasty mosquito bite.”

When he returned to the Ministry, Harry entered his memory into the Evidence department’s pensieve. Robards couldn’t possibly be displeased with it. 

Of course, he was immensely displeased, and that’s how Harry finally got assigned to stake out Malfoy Manor. 

He and Robards went back and forth about the date and time. Harry wanted an afternoon, mostly for personal reasons; Draco hadn’t been working on his latest sculpture in front of him, and Harry was dying to know who would emerge from the marble. Every time he came by, Draco had it covered with a thick black cloth. 

Robards insisted on Friday evenings, so Harry could watch Draco and Pansy together, and being the department head, Robards eventually won out. 

So that’s how Harry came to be crouched in a thicket outside Malfoy Manor on a chilly late February afternoon, wishing he’d thought to bring a more substantial snack than the jerky he’d grabbed on the way out of the Ministry cafeteria. 

The invisibility cloak was with him, and he knew the location and quality of all the wards by now, but still, he couldn’t help feeling Draco was aware of his presence. The cloth was draped over the statue, as always, and Draco was sitting on the veranda. His portfolio was clutched under his arm. He was so protective of it that Harry thought it bordered on paranoid, and he wondered for the thousandth time since becoming Draco’s probationary Auror what it contained. 

Draco’s breath made fog in the air, but he looked otherwise quite warm. He was wearing a fox fur coat. For all Draco claimed to be penniless, he did seem to wear quite a lot of very expensive looking clothing. He couldn’t help but be apprehensive that Draco was keeping something from him. He felt stalked by guilt and suspicion every waking moment he spent at work these days- suspicion that Draco was hiding money from his investigation, and guilt that he was investigating him at all. 

Pansy arrived, and she and Draco kissed and poured each other drinks. Pansy was giggling. Draco was straight-faced and wore a long suffering look, which only egged Pansy on. 

“It’s been so long, Draco.”

“Indeed,” he said, handing her a tall, triangularly shaped glass. “How was the cruise?”

“Wonderful, but I won’t set foot on another boat for the foreseeable future. Two months on a yacht is one month too long. How was your Christmas? Get any  _ presents? _ ” She said the word “presents” with special emphasis. 

“Rules, Pansy,” said Draco, cryptically. “Don’t make me warn you, or I won’t tell you anything.”

“You’re such a bore,” she said, gulping down a generous helping of the Manhattan she’d poured herself. Harry’s stomach turned. He hated olives. “Still worried about - “

“Yes,” said Draco. “You know I am. Stop it at once, or I’ll set the hounds on you.”

Pansy laughed. “Fine. Don’t think I noticed you haven’t answered my question.”

“Yes. I received presents. They were entirely appropriate presents.” 

“You sound like one of your statues,” Pansy said, teasingly. “Have things been progressing?”

“If by progressing, you mean my heart has been slowly cracking in half, then yes, they’ve been progressing nicely.”

“Oh Draco,” sighed Pansy. “I’d imagine you’ve been going about things in the worst way. Are you quoting Virgil again?”

“Just because Blaise didn’t understand the way I flirt doesn’t mean everyone is equally clueless,” said Draco. 

_ Fuck _ , thought Harry,  _ they’re talking about Draco’s boyfriend. _ Harry had been wondering whom Draco could possibly be seeing. Harry saw him three or four times a week, and monitored all his communications,  _ and  _ tracked his movements, and he still hadn’t been able to figure out whom Pansy was teasing him about regularly in her letter. He hoped one of them dropped his name, so Harry could… he didn’t know what he’d do. Maybe follow him to a cafe and bump into him, spill his coffee all over his shoes.  _ Yeah _ . 

“Is that him, there?” asked Pansy curiously, gesturing to the sculpture. She made a lunge for the cloth. “Oooh, it is, isn’t it? Let me see!” 

Draco took out his wand and pointed it directly at her nose. “I swear, Pansy, I will hex you. I will make you have one eyebrow, and it will be second year all over again for a  _ week _ .”

Harry’s heart quickened. The statue. That was  _ him _ , Harry, in that statue, he  _ knew  _ it. Did Draco - 

Then he heard Snape’s voice, unbidden, in his mind.  _ Where is your evidence? _

He had no evidence. Only his own wishful thinking. It was Draco's mystery boyfriend, of course. He couldn't let his feelings guide the facts. He was an on-duty Auror, not a fourth-year girl. 

“Fine, have it your way,” Pansy said. “Aren’t you tired of being shut up here by yourself? You know you could come and see me and Blaise. Our offer still stands.”

“Thanks, Pansy,” said Draco, his head buried, defeated, in one of his hands, “but I’m not up for a menage-a-trois right this moment.”

Harry was scandalized.  _ Scandalized _ . Slytherins. Debauched, the lot of them. 

“Don’t you think,” she said wickedly, sucking on the tiny straw in her cocktail, “that if you don’t use it for long enough, it might fall off?”

“I use it all the time,” said Draco. “No one’s around to see it, is all.”

“Pity.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Change of subject,” said Pansy, brightly. “I heard you’re doing Longbottom’s invitations.”

“That’s not a change of subject, Pansy.”

“It’s not, you’re right,” she admitted. “I only wanted to bring up the same thing in a different way.”

“Of course you did.”

“Is  _ he  _ invited?”

“Of course he’s invited, why wouldn’t he be invited?”

Harry bristled. Neville’s wedding. Draco’s boyfriend… or, his crush, or whomever he was to Draco.... Was invited to Neville’s wedding. And Harry was going to have to see him there, probably with Draco, and he was going to have to get horribly drunk beforehand to deal with it. _Horribly_ _drunk_ , Harry thought, imagining the volume of alcohol needed to propel himself through that scenario. 

“Are  _ you  _ invited?”

“ _ No _ , I’m not invited. I’m doing their stationary. I’m not a social contact. Why on earth would they invite me?”   


“I’m not asking if Neville invited you,” said Pansy. “I’m asking if  _ he  _ invited you.”

“Pansy, don’t do this. Let’s talk about something else, anything, you’re torturing me -”

“Don’t you think he might invite you? After all the -”

“No, I don’t,” said Draco, cutting her off. “He won’t. He’ll take someone who isn’t a Death Eater, who is a good person that other people like, who has a real job with a real home and an entirely manageable amount of debt. Who doesn’t have a scar on his arm and a  _ probation officer _ , Pansy, because he’s the best person I know, and he wouldn’t be caught dead with me.”

Harry felt a surge of anger. Whomever it was that Draco was interested in was clearly a terrible person. Had they rejected Draco? Had they told him he didn’t have a “real job”, called him a Death Eater, made him feel like he wasn’t worthy because of his past? Harry would find this person and make them pay. Draco had a past, but who didn’t?  _ That’s life, isn’t it? _ Harry had done things he wasn’t proud of. If this man was  _ the best person Draco knew _ , surely he would look past all that to see how talented Draco was, how strong and how whip-smart, how - 

“Draco,” said Pansy, laying a hand on Draco’s arm. Draco swallowed heavily. “I’m sorry. Don’t be so serious, darling,” she said, as Draco wiped at his eyes. “I only meant to tease you. Would you like to talk about something else? I’ll tell you about my trip, if you’d like.”

Draco took a deep breath and threw his head back onto his chair. “Yes. I’d like.”

“Brilliant.” Pansy pulled out her bag and fished out two cigarettes. “Here you are.”

“Thanks,” Draco croaked, and lit his cigarette by snapping his fingers. “Which island had the prettiest boys?”

“I thought you’d ask me about that,” said Pansy, lighting her own cigarette with the tip of her wand. “It was Ios.”

“You’re joking,” said Draco.

They passed the next two hours in companionable gossip. When Pansy finally left, Harry’s legs were asleep, and it was a solid fifteen minutes before he could stand without being overcome by pins and needles. Draco stood and waved her off, and then sat back on his chair.

Harry watched him. He hoped against hope that Draco would remove the black cloth over the sculpture, but instead he took the portfolio out from underneath his chair. It seemed he simply could not be separated from the thing. Draco flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for, and then stared at it for some time, from time to time brushing something he saw on the parchment with his fingers, frowning. 

The sun had set long ago by the time Draco went inside the Manor at last. 


	5. I could not foresee this thing happening to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The climax of the story. 
> 
> By using the word “climax,” I am trying to imply there's more sex in this chapter, while also teasing a cliffhanger. I am a very subtle and clever writer!
> 
> Trigger warning: Some discussions of anorexia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking a break writing this to participate in three fests. However, I already have the next three chapters written and ready to publish. 
> 
> This is the last chapter from Harry's POV. I'm super excited to switch to Draco's POV.

Chapter 5

Monday morning was the team meeting again, and again, Harry nearly resigned on the spot. It was only Neville’s quick thinking that kept him in the employ of the Ministry. 

Ron, Cho, Neville, and several other Aurors who had been drawn into the potions smuggling case were the first to report. They had made a stunning discovery - someone in the Ministry was involved in the illegal potions trade.

“Cho entered evidence from the financial documents we found into the evidence office,” said Ron, pointing his wand at the documents, projected on the wall. “We pulled those files two months ago and sent them to the Wizengamot to get a warrant on a warehouse in Liverpool. When we went to the hearing, Cho noticed some of the figures had been altered.” Ron smiled in her direction. “I never would have noticed that. Mind like a steel trap, this one,” he said, admiringly. “We stuck her memories of originally reading the documents in a pensieve and compared them to the documents we’d had at the hearing. They were significantly altered.” 

Cho nodded. “The only people who had access to those documents after they came out of Evidence are high up in the Ministry, perhaps even the Wizengamot itself,” she said. “We have sent out another batch of documents from Evidence to strategically placed Ministry employees. Ron had the idea. We’re in the process of recalling them, and once we have all of them in our files, we’ll compare them to the originals, and hopefully be able to track down the source of the alterations.”

“And you think if you find any alterations, whomever altered them is definitely in the potions ring?” Robards was glaring at them skeptically.

“No, sir,” said Ron. “Not exactly. But that will be strong enough evidence to compel a Veritaserum warrant. We’ll have that information available to you within a month.”

Harry was impressed, as ever, at Ron’s strategic abilities. Ron had passed a bit of the documents his way last week on some pretense or another, and Harry realized now that Ron had included him, Harry, in the investigation. _Clever_ , he thought.  _ If I’m on the list of people investigated, it will make him look impartial _ . He glanced over at Ron, who was watching Robards impassively. 

Robards turned to Harry next, a sheen of sweat gathered on his brow, clearly gearing up for another fight.  _ Perfect _ , thought Harry,  _ if he wants a fight over Draco, I’ll give him one.  _

“Potter. You staked out the Manor on Friday.”

“I did.”

“And what were your findings? Is Parkinson colluding in any criminal activity?”

“No,” said Harry, deliberately dropping the “sir” he knew Robards was expecting. “I was there for hours. Neither Mr. Black nor Ms. Parkinson mentioned any criminal activity.”

“You’re saying,” said Robards, building up a head of steam, “that they sat outdoors, drinking for hours, and never once spoke about any criminal activity? A former Death Eater and a Death Eater sympathizer didn’t say  _ one  _ word about criminal activity?”

“That is what I’m saying, yes.”

“No potions smuggling, no dark artifacts, no creature trading?”

“No, no, and no,” said Harry. 

“How is Malfoy making so much money, then?” challenged Robards. “I’ve seen the financial documents you’ve submitted to Evidence.”

“I’ve audited those myself,” said Harry. “He’s working. I’ve told you. He does calligraphy for weddings.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Well you should,” said Neville. “He’s done mine, hasn’t he? Cost us an arm and a leg, but he did a bang up job.”

Robards ignored Neville and plowed ahead. “What was he talking about, then? For hours, at night, with an ex-Slytherin Voldemort supporter?”

Harry wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “Er…”

“Well?”

“His - he was talking about…” Harry tried to answer as quietly as possible, but wound up trailing off into a mutter.

“ _ What _ , Potter?”

“His - his  _ boyfriend _ ,” said Harry, trying to disguise the last word behind a cough. 

“For the last time. You’ll find out who this person is, Potter, and you’ll record their meetings, and  _ then _ we’ll have evidence that Malfoy is concealing personal contacts from his probationary Auror and send him to prison.” Robards began shuffling papers and walked towards the doors. “You’re all dismissed.”

The other Aurors rose to leave, but Harry stayed at the table for a long time, trying to stop his hands from shaking. He wouldn’t give Robards the satisfaction of seeing him unhinged when he went into his office and resigned, but before he could master himself well enough to do so, Neville walked back towards him. 

“Harry, it’s alright, we’ll think of something,” he said. 

“It’s not alright, Neville,” Harry threw his pencil on the desk. It skittered off the edge, and Harry made no move to recover it. “I’ve been trying to keep Draco out of trouble all year, and now Robards is going to catch him meeting someone outside of my control or supervision, and I can’t do a thing about it. What am I supposed to do, wait for him to go on a date and turn up unannounced?”

“I have an idea,” said Neville. “I’ll invite him to the wedding. We’ll tell him he can bring a date, and you’ll be there the whole time. That way, Robards can’t claim he was doing anything against the law, and he’ll report to you that he’s going to my wedding, so he can’t say he’s concealing his activities.”

“Draco said whoever it is, you’ve already invited,” said Harry, remembering Draco and Pansy’s conversation. “Good idea, Neville. And your wedding’s only three weeks away, isn’t it? So that won’t be enough time for Draco to incriminate himself in the meantime.”

“Shouldn’t be. We’ve got him working overtime, getting the menus and the programs sorted.” Neville shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what goes into making a wedding happen.”

\---------------------------

Harry turned up for their next three probationary interviews and their appointed tea parties feeling like the worst person. 

Having got to know Draco over the course of nine months, he had grown to… well, to like him. And not just when he was swanning about with his forearms on display. He properly liked him. 

It was hard not to, now that Draco had become humble in his adulthood; he’d kept all the sharpness and wits he’d had as an adolescent, but lost all the bigotry and arrogance. In fact, Harry rather thought he could do with a bit more arrogance, the way he was always putting himself down, letting himself live in a rat’s nest, and avoiding regular human contact. 

Harry wanted to, so many times, interrupt their conversations and just come out with it, assuage his guilty conscience:  _ Draco, I’ve been reading all your mail and watching you have cocktails with your best friend _ \- or  _ Draco, I told a the entire Auror staff that you’ve got a boyfriend, and we discussed at length how to put you in prison for it _ , or  _ Yes, thank you for that hair sample, it is locked in evidence right this moment, and I’d quite like another one _ . 

But he couldn’t unburden himself with a confession. Harry’s best hope of at least remaining friends with Draco after his probationary period ended was to conceal from him the surveillance program Harry was directing, and hope it never came out of the Auror office. 

Making matters worse, Narcissa was visibly deteriorating. She was eating less and less, and her hair was looking rather thin. Draco’s mouth made a blunt line every time he looked at her. Harry brought it up in the library, out of Narcissa’s earshot, at the end of one of their interviews. 

“Don’t you think she’s… going backwards a bit?” he said cautiously. 

“I do,” said Draco. He wasn’t looking at Harry. He was carefully drawing on tiny little cards the names of all the guests at Neville’s wedding - their seating cards. The script he was using was microscopic, and he had the tip of his tongue stuck out the corner of his teeth. Harry wanted to lick it, but he wanted just as strongly to stop thinking about licking it, with the result that his knuckles had turned white over the course of the interview. 

“It’s a disease, Potter, and though you are good at saving people, you can’t fix her. I’ve tried, my father tried, my Grandmother Black tried. Even Aunt Bella had a go, in her way. She’s been like this for decades. We try something new, it gets better, and then it gets worse again. She doesn’t want to be well.”

“Of course she wants to be well,” said Harry. “Everyone wants to be well.”

Draco sighed and put down his quill, still not meeting Harry’s eyes. “I don’t think she believes that she has enough to stick around for,” he said, bleakly.

“That’s - that’s not true, Draco. She loves you. She’d be here for you.”

“If she did, she’d go into treatment,” Draco said bitterly. “I’ve been speaking to her about returning, and she won’t do it. She’s my mother, Potter. What do you know about her anyway? Who are you to tell me how she feels?”

“I’m quite possibly the only person -” Harry started, remembering the forest, but then stopped, because Draco looked so wretched, and fighting with him about his anorexic mother wasn’t going to fix anything. “Look, she’s lucky to have you - after what you’ve done here, everything you’ve made out of a shit situation. Everything will work out in the end, you just have to fight to get her there with you.”

Draco huffed. “I have forever wished I had your confidence, Potter.”

“Well you should have confidence,” said Harry, feeling his cheeks flush up a bit when he realized Draco may have, possibly, complimented him. “You’ll pull through, both of you. Look at your business - look at your bloody ceiling, Draco. The things you do make are so - “

“I make them because I have  _ nothing else _ .” Draco’s voice was quiet, but Harry could hear the despair and the anger in his voice. “I have nothing else to live for, nothing except my work and my mother, who’s looking more and more like Ophelia every day. That’s  _ it _ . Potter. All I’ve got.” 

“That’s not nothing,” said Harry, thinking,  _ who the bloody hell is Ophelia? _ “I’ve spent the whole of my life without my family. You’ve got that, at least.” Draco looked at him guiltily, so Harry tried to lighten the mood. “And my handwriting is terrible. Chicken scratch.”

Draco finally cracked a smile. “It is, you know.”

Harry got up to leave. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you next week.”

“Earlier, actually,” said Draco, returning to his work. “I’ve been invited to Neville and Hannah’s wedding.”

“Oh,” said Harry, feeling his stomach drop like a stone. He’d allowed himself to forget, for a moment, all about that. “Bringing anyone?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Draco. “What, did you think I’d animate one of my statues and bring them along?”

Harry felt the heat on his face rise again. “Of course not,” he spluttered, and Draco gave him a long look, like he knew what he was thinking about. 

Mercifully, Draco changed the subject. “Thanks for the pep talk, Potter.”

Harry left without saying another word. How he was going to make it through the weekend, he had no idea. 

\----------------------------- 

  
  


Harry turned up to the wedding in the same carriage as Ron, Hermione, and Luna Lovegood, who was also invited, but whom Harry had decided to take along as his date. He hated feeling like a third wheel with Ron and Hermione. Besides, Luna was strange enough that she tended to put people off pestering him in public. 

He was happy he’d coupled up with Luna, because on the carriage ride over, Ron was so ebullient and half drunk that if it had been just the three of them, he would have fucked Hermione in the carriage right in front of him. As it was, he and Luna made stiff conversation while their two friends snogged and giggled and tried to conceal that they were furtively groping each other. 

“Are you hoping to dance with anyone, Harry?” Luna asked him. 

“No, actually,” he said with perfect truthfulness. “I hate dancing. You?”

“Oh, I adore dancing,” said Luna, “but mostly the kind I can do by myself. Ecstatic dancing, muggles call it. I’ve been practicing for the solstice celebrations. Certain movements and incantations -” 

Harry lost the thread of the conversation when she started talking about dowsing rods. A pit of dread had settled into his stomach, and the closer the carriage drew to the event space, and more it roiled Harry’s innards. He was going to see Draco there - and Draco was going to see his mystery boyfriend, and Harry was condemned to watch them the whole evening so he could dump his memories into a pensieve later for Robards to pick through. 

He had never felt quite such a specific mix of enraged jealousy and self-disgust. The urge to quit his job, on the spot, and refuse to attend the reception was strong; but if he did, Robards would assign someone else to tail Draco, and then he’d wind up in Azkaban within the week. 

When the carriage arrived, Harry thought he would rather be sick than open the door and step out of it. He opened the door and stepped out anyway. 

Of course Draco was waiting outside the churchyard. He was wearing the same robes he’d always worn - the black ones, with the breeches and tunic and embroidered dragon, but he must have spelled them silver for the day. Draco sat on a stone bench, and the fabric caught the sun just so. 

He wasn’t watching the carriages arrive, so he didn’t see Harry and Luna walk by. His entire attention was focused on a flower in his hand - a daisy - and he was pulling it apart, petal by petal. 

“Does he love you?” Luna asked. Draco’s head snapped up. “Or does he love you not?”

Draco laughed. “Definitely not.”

“That’s a shame,” said Luna, seriously. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright now that you’re here,” said Draco, and gave her an awkward but genuinely affectionate hug. “It’s good to see you, cousin.”

“Always,” she said. “Would you like to sit with us for the ceremony?”

“Ah, no.” Draco shook his head firmly. “I’ll be in the back, you’ll be in the front. Wouldn’t want to cause a scandal.” 

“We’ll see you after,” said Harry, hoping Draco would sit next to whomever he was  _ involved _ with, and he’d finally get a look at the bastard’s face. He led Luna away. 

“Poor Draco,” said Luna. “He strikes me as being quite lonely, doesn’t he?”

“Wha - yeah, he is, actually,” said Harry, who had been craning his neck to look behind him, trying to see if anyone was greeting Draco. “You’re related, aren’t you? You should stop by and visit him. I don’t think he has enough visitors.”

“I tried,” said Luna, sadly. “He wouldn’t let me. Said the Manor wasn’t suitable for visitors, and didn’t want me back at the place I’d been held captive.”

“What about him coming over to yours, then?” said Harry. “I know he doesn’t leave the house much, but you could invite him.”

“I did,” said Luna, shaking her head. “He’s my cousin, and he was so kind to me, in his own way, during my stay at the Manor,” she said this as if she had been a house guest, “but he wouldn’t hear of it. He told me he didn’t need my pity.”

“Typical,” scoffed Harry, settling down into the pew. He smiled at Neville, his mind off Draco for a moment. Neville looked very handsome and proud at the front of the church. Harry relaxed, forgetting his problems. He was happy for his friends, and for the lovely, peaceful world they’d all built together. It was like he’d told Draco - everything would turn out all right, in the end. 

An hour later, Harry was drinking a gin and tonic in a pretty English garden and laughing with Ron about the time Neville’s wand malfunctioned fourth year and turned all his pants purple. They passed a lovely afternoon under the marquee, eating heavy hors d'oeuvres and getting progressively more tipsy. It would have been perfect, except Harry had to keep getting up to troll the crowd for Draco, check who he was talking to. 

Most of the time, to Harry’s relief, it was Neville’s gran, although one time he got up to “use the loo” and happened upon him  _ clearly _ flirting with the bartender, leaning in to get a drink  _ much _ too far. 

The bartender was into it. Harry could never flirt with strangers, he hadn’t the gift for it, but of course Draco would have. Harry stormed off before he saw the man, who was shorter than Draco and gazing up at him with a cow-like expression, bat his eyes for the second time in as many minutes. 

Feeling both infuriated and guilty for spying, Harry went back into the marquee, where the tables had been set out for dinner. He found his and Luna’s nametag, noticing that Ron and Hermione had been sat over at the Weasley table with Molly, Arthur, Ginny, and Fred. He and Luna were with Bill, Fleur, Charlie, and…

“Fancy another gin and tonic?” Draco said, coming up behind him and taking his seat at Harry’s table. 

“Er - I didn’t realize we’d be sitting together,” Harry said, shifting over. 

“Yes, well. Neville must have assumed no one else would put up with me, so here we are. Don’t look so disappointed.” 

“I’m not disappointed. Just surprised is all,” said Harry, taking the glass from Draco. “Cheers.”

Draco and Fleur greeted each other and spent the next half hour, much to Harry’s intense frustration, speaking in French. _Of course he speaks French_ , Harry thought to himself. This was just one more thing to make his dick half hard whenever he thought about Draco. It was so unfair. How was he meant to get used to how attractive Draco was when he kept manifesting new talents? 

Bill went to get a drink, and was a while coming back. “Harry,” he said, sitting down. “Did you see the wedding gift someone brought Neville? It’s at the back of the marquee, with the other gifts.” 

“No, which one?” said Harry, thinking he couldn’t possibly be talking about his own gift. He’d brought a set of crystal coasters, which while expensive, were not what anyone would describe as fantastic. 

“There’s a sculpture out there,” said Bill. “It’s of Neville with the sword of Gryffindor. Looks like he did in the battle, but dressed up a bit. Nicer robes.”

“A statue?” Fleur said, intrigued. “Of Neville? ‘oo was eet from?”

“Yes, who indeed,” said Harry, and Draco turned to him, shaking his head. “I think I’ll go have a look.”

He walked away from the table, knocking Draco pointedly with his elbow as he passed. 

Of course the sculpture was flawless. About three feet high, it was a miniature of sorts, made of bronze, and set onto a carved stone pediment. A small crowd of people was gathered around it, marveling. 

Draco came up behind him. “I swear, Potter,” he whispered, “if you say one word - “

“Oh, come off it,” said Harry. “How can you be ashamed of something like this? How could you not want people to know?”

“Not want people to know that I’m so destitute that I had to hand-make a present for a wedding instead of buying an appropriate gift? Are you insane, Potter?”

“It’s better than my gift,” said Harry. “You don’t want people to know you’re talented?”

“I’m  _ not  _ talented, for the last time,” said Draco. “If they knew it was me, they’d be forced to compliment me. You never get good feedback on your art in a social setting, it’s humiliating for everyone involved.”

“So start putting your stuff in galleries, then,” said Harry. “See if anyone buys them.”

“They wouldn’t,” said Draco. “I’m not talented. It’s a hobby.”

“You’re practically a master, Draco,” said Harry. “It’s as good as anything in the National Gallery.”

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all,” Draco mused. 

“What, is that Shakespeare?” said Harry, proud of himself for finally cottoning on that most of what Draco said was a reference to something or other. 

Draco shook his head. “No. Not Shakespeare.” 

From somewhere deeper in the Marquee, the band started playing the Rolling Stones. Half the people at the tables were on their feet in an instant. 

_ I can’t get no satisfaction _ , the frontman sang out, and Harry had never related harder to a song lyric in his life. 

“Do you like dancing?” Draco asked him, seeing Harry watching the dance floor. 

“God, no,” said Harry. “You go on if you like, I think I’ll take a walk.” 

“I’ll come with you,” said Draco, shrugging. “I’m a terrible dancer.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” said Harry. 

They walked out into the garden. The sun had set while they’d been eating dinner. Draco’s robes were sparkling as if they were bio luminescent, and they matched his eyes so perfectly. Harry was feeling quite brave. 

“Tell me why you changed your name,” Harry said. “And don’t say it’s none of my concern.”

Draco’s lips pursed. “Wouldn’t you change your name?”

“I dunno,” said Harry. “I don’t think so. It’s the name your parents gave you, isn’t it?”

“It’s the name my  _ father _ gave me,” said Draco. “My father, who tried his hardest to murder people, to murder  _ children _ . Who joined a terrorist hate group, who compelled me to join, who didn’t protect me, or my mother from - from -”

“Voldemort.”

“No - yes - I mean, no. That’s not what I’m - look, I don’t have to tell you everything just because you fluttered your eyelashes at me.”

Harry felt the blush rising again. “I most certainly did  _ not _ .”

“Whatever, Potter. Suit yourself. My father led his family into ruin. He destroyed our family, and our home. I took my mother’s name. My mother loved me, and she was ready to sacrifice everything to save me. My father wasn’t, and I won’t have his name. I won’t have the name of a family of racists, of wizards who have been torturing good people for hundreds of years.”

“Fair enough,” said Harry, “but the Black family isn’t much better, is it?” 

“Sure they are,” said Draco. “They have their moments, naturally - look at Aunt Wallburga. I understand you still have her portrait.”

“I do,” said Harry. “But the family motto is ‘Toujours Pur’ - and what about Bellatrix, and all the others like her?”

“The last generation of Blacks wasn’t so bad,” said Draco. “You’ve said so in your own testimony. Regulus, and Sirius. That generation was excellent, really. From what I understand from Snape, Sirius was quite fashionable.”

Harry chuckled. “That would be what you care about.” They had walked into a copse of trees set before a lake. “ _ Snape _ told you Sirius was fashionable?

“No, he always complained about what an arse he was, dressing himself in leather jackets, with his poncy long hair and his motorcycle, and I pieced together the aesthetic and found it crudely appealing. I bet he had tattoos.”

“He did,” said Harry, chuckling. “Great big ones.” 

“That sounds delicious,” said Draco, looking a bit lascivious. 

Harry thought for a moment, and then decided to go ahead and say what was on his mind anyway. He had nothing to lose. “Is that what you think about me? That I’m -” he choked a bit on the lump in his throat, trying to get the words out - “that I’m ‘crudely appealing’?” 

Draco’s head snapped to the left, and he looked at him square in the face. “Not at all,” Draco said. “No - Harry, not in the slightest.”

“Oh,” said Harry, and he  _ knew _ he sounded disappointed, but he had, for a moment, hoped that maybe Draco and Pansy had been talking about  _ him  _ in their garden, maybe it was  _ him _ under the black cloth, carved into the marble, but clearly that was a fantasy, improperly buried. He should go now, back to the table, and let Draco - 

Draco was kissing him. 

His right hand was gently running through Harry’s hair, and his left hand was holding fast to his jaw, and he was tilting Harry’s head back, and his tongue was slipping gently into his mouth, licking him as if he was an exotic delicacy. 

Harry was stunned, but not enough not to kiss him back, at first, and then all at once it occurred to him that he could, and _oh_ , he did. They snogged for what felt like the shortest and longest moment of Harry’s life, simultaneously, and distantly he was aware of a nightingale singing in the tree behind them, the water lapping at the edge of the lake. He pushed up onto his toes to get more of Draco, as much as he could. 

“You,” said Draco, pulling away and stroking Harry’s jaw with his callused thumb, “are not crudely anything, Potter. Harry. You are perfectly made, every bit of you the most beautiful thing in the world, and you haven’t any idea, have you.” Now he was running his fingers through Harry’s hair, tangling it, and Harry thought that he hadn’t been stupid after all. He knew it. He bloody  _ knew _ it.

Harry clutched at Draco, pulling his head back down to his mouth so he could have more of him, for once in his life not minding that he was a bit shorter than average, if it meant he could feel  _ surrounded _ , if Draco’s big chest could hum at him and he could feel it in his shoulders. 

“Hasn’t anyone told you, Harry, they must have,” Draco’s voice was so gentle, as he placed a trail of soft, deliberate kisses down the column of his neck, “you are everything good, everything wonderful, wrapped up together. Nothing I make will ever come close to you, but I keep trying, I keep -” he had reached the open collar of Harry’s robes, and he was unbuttoning the tunic and slipping his hands inside of it, like he would die if he didn’t see all of Harry, didn’t touch him, “making things and wishing - oh  _ fuck,  _ Harry,” (he was nibbling on Draco’s ear now; Harry felt wild, near weeping with want for him) “wishing they were half as beautiful.”

The thing was, no, nobody had ever told Harry anything of the sort. Well. His parents had, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t remember that, and his friends were his friends precisely because they weren’t fawning lackeys, so actually Harry didn’t go about being extravagantly adored by anyone he knew well - and until this moment, until this very moment, with Draco running his hands all over him, he didn’t know how badly he wanted that. To be adored. 

It gutted him, that he was getting it. It was like having a room inside himself, a room full of a need, like hunger or thirst, that he’d never known was there, or rather, that he’d been actively ignoring and telling himself that slaking that thirst, that hunger, was egotistical and wrong. 

And now Draco was giving it to him. Not just offering it, but insisting that he take it. 

“No,” Harry managed, “no one’s ever - no one has.”

“That’s impossible,” said Draco, finally freeing Harry from his sleeves. He drew him back in, embracing him, kissing his head. “That’s the worst thing I ever heard. You’re an actual hero, from a storybook, from an epic poem, you are nobility itself… darling, look at you - your eyes, your hair, the way you carry yourself, like nothing can touch you…”

Harry moaned and pawed ineffectually at Draco’s clothes. He wanted to let Draco make love to him, immediately. The things he was saying were lighting up whole parts of himself he’d neglected for decades and he wanted all of it at this very instant…

Draco stopped him, grabbed his wrist. “I have - I have nowhere to take you, Harry, I’m sorry, I can’t offer to take you back to-”

“You can take me right here,” said Harry, pushing Draco’s grey robes off his shoulders. “This is fine, better than fine,” and then they both sank into the grass, and Draco took off the rest of Harry’s clothes. Harry was hoping for a blow job, like the one he’d got in the dream where he and Draco were playing at Pygmalion, but Draco turned him over on his knees and pushed his face onto a pillow of moss instead. 

“I am going to worship you, just like you deserve,” Draco said, and he very tenderly licked at Harry’s arsehole. 

Harry wasn’t expecting that at all, and he fairly yelped in surprise. He didn’t pull away though - Draco’s tongue  _ was  _ worshipping him, and his hands were pulling him apart, and Harry heard sloppy noises coming from Draco’s mouth on his hole, from his tongue spearing in and out of it. Draco was moaning, and he was rubbing Harry's cock, fisting it slowly, the pace excruciating. 

“That’s right,” Draco told him, his voice condescending, like he was talking to a favorite child that had thrown a tantrum. “You don’t have to come, Harry, it’s alright to just feel good when I touch you, isn’t it?”

Harry nodded silently. He rubbed his face against the soft earth, and rubbed his entire backside onto Draco’s face. 

“You deserve,” Draco said, pulling back now, “to feel as good as you’d like, whenever you’d like, and I can give it to you.” He whispered a spell, and a lubed finger now replaced his tongue at Harry’s entrance. “For as long as you want. I’ll serve you,” the finger toyed at his hole, drawing wet circles around it, “because that’s what you deserve, to feel good. Does this feel good, Harry?” 

Harry could only groan in affirmation. He nearly felt ashamed at how wanton he was, but Draco shushed him and slowly breeched him with his finger, and told him, “that’s right, that’s so good,” praising him and fucking him and touching him, and Harry didn’t want to come, he didn’t, he wanted Draco to go on touching him for the next hour or two, lazy and erotic, but of course Draco was just as good at this as he was at everything else, and Harry was spurting over Draco’s white fingers into the grass. 

“Fuck,” said Harry, and all Draco did was pet him through it and tell him how good he was. 

“Can I - Harry, would you let me -”

But of course, he didn’t have to ask. Harry nodded and turned around so he was lying on his back, the grass cold on his back. He shivered, his body finally registering that it was a rather chilly March night, and Draco cast a warming charm on them that was so soft it felt like a fuzzy blanket wrapping them up. 

Draco was kissing him again, and he whispered, “will you let me look after you, Harry, will you let me,” and all Harry could say was “yes, please,  _ please _ ,” and then Draco was inside him. 

It didn’t feel like Harry had expected. He’d done this to women, before, and he’d had sex with men, but not in this precise way. He’d expected it to hurt, but it didn’t, probably because Draco had stretched him so much with his fingers, or because he was going so slowly, inching in bit by bit, until Harry was speared open and shivering and clutching onto his broad shoulders. 

“That’s right, darling,” Draco said, kissing his forehead and making small thrusts inside of him. “You feel so good, so perfect,” and Harry drank the praise up, let his knees fall open and his body relax, like he’d been waiting his whole life for Draco to come along and worship him. 

Draco was thrusting harder now, but not faster, going slowly in and out of him, and Harry felt himself getting hard again. He wanted to reach down and touch himself, but Draco’s arms were underneath his shoulders and his hands braced in his hair for purchase, so all Harry could do was rub himself up against Draco’s hard stomach. 

Draco kissed his neck, and ground into his hole, making circular motions with his hips now instead of going forwards and back, and that rubbed up against something inside Harry so that he cried out, and Draco did it again, and again, properly moaning now, incoherent, except for a whispered bit of praise for Harry here and there, “beautiful, so beautiful, Harry, if you only knew,” and then he was finally going faster, pumping himself as if he’d lost control, and he came. 

They were both panting. Draco rolled off him, and they lay on the grass together. Harry curled around Draco’s long body, and Draco tucked Harry’s chin in the crook of his neck and shoulder, petting his arm and fingers.

Now that they were finished, neither of them seemed to know what to say. Draco had told him everything, had been so open with him, and Harry knew he should do the same. He should tell him  _ now _ , right now, that he’d been watching him and reading his mail, but he couldn’t bring himself to ruin the moment. He didn’t want Draco to stop thinking -  _ fuck _ \- to stop thinking he was perfectly noble and brave. 

He wasn’t, and he didn’t actually deserve anything that Draco had just given him. Harry’s stomach roiled again, and he felt miserable, but he couldn’t make it stop, not just yet. 

Draco finally sat up and looked out at the lake. It was a new moon, and only starlight was reflected on the water. The warming charm he’d cast was wearing off, and Harry busied himself putting on his robes. 

“Er - thanks,” said Harry, unsure of what else to say. 

“You’re welcome,” said Draco. “Anytime.”

Harry wanted to say, “again, now, you can come back to mine, do it again,” but the thought of listening to Draco tell him how much he admired him when Harry had been lying to him for eight months made him want to be sick. 

Instead, Harry gave him an abortive hug which turned into a chummy pat on the back, and walked back to the marquee, feeling somehow worse about himself than he had done in years. 

\-----------------------------------

The Monday morning meeting came, and of course Harry had to lie about what had happened, or at least lie by omission and hope Robards wouldn’t demand his memories in the departmental pensieve. He told Robards that he hadn’t seen Draco with anyone except Neville’s gran, Fleur, Bill, Charlie and Luna, and he hadn’t spoken about anything criminal with anyone. 

“You said he was speaking French with Delacour. What if they were discussing criminal dealings? This potions case - “ he waved his arm towards Ron and Cho, “-has connections in France.”

“You think Fleur Delacour, the war hero, has connections to illegal potions dealing?” said Ron, incredulously. 

“I think if Potter isn’t going to get us any evidence, then I’m going to go get it myself,” said Robards, decisively. “I’m through with this. We’re on a deadline -”

“What deadline?” said Ron. “I didn’t know we were on a deadline to chuck an innocent person into Azkaban.”

“I’m going to the Wizengamot to ask for a warrant,” interrupted Robards. 

“On what grounds?” asked Harry. “You don’t have cause.”

“Easy to get around that,” said Robards. “You’ll come with me, say you have suspicions about miscreant behavior from your charge, and they won’t think twice about giving it to us.”

Harry went back to his desk, vowing that as soon as he calmed down he would write a perfectly professional letter of resignation detailing all the reasons why he thought Robards would be fired. He pulled out his quill to craft it, and hesitated. 

Instead, he wrote at the top of the page, in his very, very best handwriting: 

“Draco, 

I’m sorry to tell you this so late in our -” here he paused, looking for a synonym for “relationship” “-year of probation, but I’ve been surveilling your communications and person at the request of my boss, head Auror Robards. I deeply regret not telling you sooner, and I accept whatever consequences to our friendship this might have.”

He signed his name at the bottom of the page, attempting and totally failing to add a flourish. He was casting about for some sealing wax when a Patronus came charging through the back wall. 

It was a great winged horse.  _ A Pegasus _ , Harry realized, and it galloped right up to his desk. 

“Potter, I need your help,” it said, in Draco’s voice. “My mother’s had an episode, she needs whatever regeneration potions the Auror office has on hand to stabilize her before I can take her to St. Mungo’s. Quickly!” The voice was urgent, nearly panicked, and Harry leapt from his desk and ran to the first aid storage immediately. 

Of course, Robards and half the department had heard the whole exchange.

“Not now,” said Harry, rounding the corner as fast as his legs would carry him to the apparition point. 

“Listen,” said Ron. “Robards heard. He’s got cause to enter the property. In a life-threatening emergency, Aurors can enter home without a warrant. He’ll be -” Ron took a deep breath, winded, “-right behind you.”

“Fuck,” said Harry, slowing down. He hadn’t the least idea what to do. 

“Tell me what Draco doesn’t want him to find,” said Ron, in as low of a voice as he could muster. “You help Narcissa, and I’ll go get it.”

Harry’s mind raced. “There’s nothing -” Harry said, “he’s not a criminal, there’s nothing -”

Then he remembered how Draco kept his portfolio on him whenever anyone else was in the house, even Pansy. “The portfolio,” he said, running again. “Black leather. On the desk. In the library, west wing.”

“I’m on it,” said Ron, and they both disapparated. 

\---------------------------

An hour later, Harry finally collapsed in a chair in the visitor’s room. 

Narcissa’s health was precarious, but nothing was magically wrong with her. She hadn’t been eating, Draco had told him, then scared herself and decided to eat all at once, and had a heart attack. 

Harry didn’t know such a thing was possible. He didn’t understand how Narcissa could go for so long without eating in the first place, so long that her body was shutting down, that she lost her hair and all the fat on her. 

He hung around for another hour or so, hoping that Draco would come out, that he would let himself be comforted, but finally awkwardness overcame him, and he left. 

He went directly back to the office to try and find Ron. He knew Ron would have that portfolio, and if truth be told, Harry wanted to have a look at it, for no other reason than he was curious. He was sure whatever was in there was harmless, and that really, he shouldn’t look. He should return the portfolio to Draco’s desk before he got home and never mention another thing about it. 

He had just decided to let his morality win over his curiosity when he rounded the corner into Ron and Cho’s cubicle. 

Ron was reading the portfolio. He had it open on his desk, and he was bent over it with a rapt expression on his face, unlike any other that Harry had ever seen him wear when confronted with a book. 

“Can I have a look?”

Ron shook his head, and bent low over the portfolio to protect it from Harry’s line of sight. “No, mate, I think it’s best you don’t. I’ll go put it back.”

“What, is there something in there about the potions ring?” Harry asked, ever more curious. “What is it?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing, please don’t - “

But Harry had grabbed it from him, swiftly, without giving him a chance to react. 

“Fine,” said Ron. “It’s your funeral.”

“That’s a funny thing to say,” said Harry, walking back to his desk. “I’ll take it back to the Manor tomorrow.” Back at his chair, he sat down, and opened Draco’s portfolio.

  
  



	6. Confutatis Maledictus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins with Draco's backstory, many years before the first chapter. I hate when fanfic writers overly linger on past events, so don't worry - I'll get you caught up quick. A huge amount of this chapter will be filling you in on all the things Harry didn't understand from the first three chapters. I hope you enjoy all the easter eggs I've left in this chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: There are discussions of anorexia, suicide, self-harm, and a bit of gore.

Draco’s first love was the piano. 

He didn’t remember the first time he met one, but it must have been at the Manor, the one in the conservatory in the west wing. His mother played. There was a photograph of them together, him only a few weeks old, wrapped in a swaddle and lying in a bassinet, she sitting on the bench, her hands running methodically up and down the keys, doing her exercises. Hanon, he learned later, after spending hours upon hours on those same exercises. 

By the time he was four, he was reading music. He had no interest in books at that age; at least, he had no interest in reading them himself. His mother taught him his first scales, his first songs. Carols, and nursery rhymes. He played for hours, memorizing every note in every song book she bought him, until finally his father relented and allowed her to hire a teacher. 

Wizarding children had nursery school, and grammar school. There were places his parents could have sent him - one where his cousin attended with the Weasleys, another where Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle were taught. His father had attended grammar school with Crabbe’s father. 

Those weren’t places for Blacks.

Instead, he had a governess. She wore the same bun in her hair every day, and the same white robes, and she once must have been very pretty. Her cheekbones were high, and she had a wide smile, but her eyebrows had grown severe from frowning at little children, and thinking too long and too seriously about the books she read. 

Draco loved her. She taught him to be just as serious as she was, about everything that mattered. Poetry, handwriting, figures - those hotly contested by his mother, but his father insisted that he learn to run the estate, or it would go to ruin - but most especially, music. It gave him discipline, she told him, and only discipline could make beauty. 

And so they spent every afternoon in the conservatory, after Draco was finished with his lessons. He learned to play everything she set for him, but he had his favorites. He hated Chopin. Debussy. His mother loved Debussy. It sounded like a water balloon to him, or a marshmallow. 

His governess played Bach. Given her own free choice, she might never have heard a note composed by anyone else for the remainder of her life, and so Draco spent whole years of his life banging out chords like a metronomic automaton, to her great satisfaction. She sat behind him, correcting his posture and his technique, just as she corrected his handwriting. 

He tolerated Bach, but he had no access to the Baroque intensity of emotion of the 17th century. The 1600’s - there had been plagues, great wars of religion, muggles slaughtering each other with maces and cudgels, hacking their way through ten percent of the entire population of the continent - what did he know of bloodthirsty suffering? He was a child, and a pampered one, who had been taught from his earliest moments to love beauty, order, and discipline. 

And so he played Vivaldi. Over, and over, and over again, until the sheet music was ripped, until he didn’t need the sheet music anymore, until he grew frustrated and begged his mother to let him join a  _ real _ youth orchestra, the one in Wiltshire, or to let him train in London, so when he played  _ The Four Seasons _ he could hear the violins singing with him. 

His father put his foot down. His son wouldn’t play music with muggles, and that was that. 

When he begged for a record player - a poor substitute, but at least he would hear the other instruments - his father bought him a broomstick and taught him to fly. 

Draco liked flying. It gave him roughly the same feeling as playing music. Movement was only muscle memory after all, and being good at flying was a simple matter of drilling, over and over again, getting the hang of one movement, one turn, executed without having to think about it. He could tell his father was pleased when he mastered a new trick. He liked pleasing his father. 

When Draco was seventeen, he set his piano on fire. The ashes were still in a great mound in the conservatory. 

He’d come home for Christmas holiday, and he’d heard it. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. He hated that song. It was depression itself, but it was fitting for the wartime atmosphere of the manor. It couldn’t be his mother playing it - she’d never quite mastered the technique, controlling the volume of the left hand adequately versus the right - and it was being played impeccably, perfectly, exquisitely. 

Draco went to the conservatory and cautiously opened the door. His governess was there, playing the piano. 

She hadn’t been at the Manor for years, and Draco was thrilled to see her - for a moment, until he saw Peter Pettigrew sitting at the end of the piano, watching her, and… and he was… 

Of all the horrible things he’d seen the two years at the end of school, that broke him more than anything else: Pettigrew, watching his governess in her white robes. That vile little rat defiling her.

He was powerless to stop it. The only thing he could do was set fire to the damn thing. So he did. She was still under Pettigrew’s thumb, but at least Draco couldn’t hear the evidence of it. 

Draco’s second love was Harry Potter. 

He was beautiful to him from the first moment. Flinty, indomitable strength underneath a veneer of frailty, like he’d been underfed, his mop of wild black hair, his green eyes set against his freckles. Flawless. Draco thought long and hard after their meeting at Madame Malkins, once he’d realized whom he’d been speaking to, how to befriend him on the train, and then it had all gone belly up. 

He kept telling himself it didn’t matter so very much, that Potter wasn’t anything special, and then he’d seen him flying. 

Everything Draco had learned about flying came from persistence and discipline.  _ All beauty comes from discipline _ . Clearly that wasn’t true. Not if someone who had never mounted a broom before could fly so perfectly. 

To top it all off, Potter spent seven years of Draco’s life completing heroic tasks, one more dangerous than the next, just like bloody Hercules, and all Draco could do was watch and wait to be called into duty on the other side. Every time Potter walked into the fire and came back out again, Draco hated himself a bit more, for he knew he would be asked to destroy him, destroy the most beautiful thing he had ever known - more beautiful than the songs he played on the piano (and now that he was older, he played Bach more often, appreciating the desperate prayer of it at last), more beautiful than the art in the National Gallery, more beautiful than his mother. 

His mother. His mother, who saw the admiration in him, who understood what he  _ really _ meant when he came home from school, complaining about Potter’s insufferable arrogance, complaining about Granger and Weasley and anyone else who had the privilege of hanging off Potter’s arm. She knew what he wanted, and she blamed herself for him not having it. 

She’d always been self-critical, but as their family came closer and closer to ruin, she took it all on her own vanishing shoulders. She never unburdened herself to her son or her husband; instead, she ate scarcely anything, assigning herself the punishment of not deserving to exist, until she existed less, and less, and less. 

She was at her worst the year after his father died. 

They’d been sentenced, and Draco and Lucius were on house arrest. The lands and the vaults were gone, to pay the reparations. They were a hundred thousand galleons in debt to their solicitors, who had allowed them to take on debt to fund the family’s defense. 

The three of them returned to a Manor literally soaked in blood, in dark magic. Draco had wanted to spare his mother cleaning up the bodies in the dungeons, but his father deserved to see them - deserved to see the way they festered, deserved to mop up after them, to levitate them into piles for collection. 

And so that’s what they did, for three days in a row, and at the end of it, Lucius asked him, simply, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

And Draco had said, “Yes.”

He condemned himself later for not finding something better to say, something to soften the blow, something like, “you did the best you could,”, but Draco was elbow deep in necrotic tissue, in cemented brain matter vanished bit by sticky bit off blood-stained flagstones, in soiled rags and snakeskins. He’d been working for three days to clean the mess Voldemort had left behind in his former home, which now had all the charm of an abandoned concentration camp, and he’d come to the conclusion that beauty didn’t come from discipline, it didn’t come from good breeding, and it didn’t come -  _ not under any circumstances _ \- from evil. From people like his father. Beauty only came from goodness. 

So he told his father, “yes,” and wanted to add, “you are an accessory to a mass murderer, you are a torturer and a killer of mothers and fathers, of children and owls, you have made your best effort to destroy the one last thing I find beautiful, and he beat you, and I am glad of it.” 

Lucius killed himself the next morning. Draco found the cauldron of hemp in his study, and he was sorely tempted to follow after him, to do the same. What was left for him? No money, no job prospects, and a lifetime ahead of him to pine after Potter, just as he had done for the previous seven years, but with the knowledge now that he would never have him, as unredeemable, as hideous as he’d made himself. 

A week later, putting the inheritance (such as it was) in order with the solicitor, his mother mentioned that she wanted to change her name back to Black. 

A new identity, then. For both of them. A second chance. That is, after all, what the Wizengamot had wanted for them - what Potter had wanted, when he’d testified for them, that horrible afternoon when Draco thought he would have rather been sent to Azkaban than listen to Harry Potter shield him with his flawless virtue. It burned him, like a vampire entering a cathedral, to listen to Potter excuse his sins, protect him from his entirely deserved punishment. 

But he’d done it, and Draco had survived the worst of it, and afterwards, he was determined to find a way to live. 

The hundred thousand galleon debt to the solicitors needed repaying, and the first place Draco looked was the Manor’s furnishings. 

The Death Eaters had carried off the jewelry, all but Narcissa’s wedding ring. A Black family heirloom, in the family for ten generations. He sold it for five thousand galleons, and that was five percent of the debt paid. There was also the Malfoy family seal. It was worth hardly anything - twenty galleons or so, and only because it was silver - but into the pot it went. 

She made him swear to keep her father’s rings. They were gold, set with stones, one white, and one black.  _ One for protection _ , she told him, placing it on his finger when the solicitors had left, that week after his father had left. 

“And the other one?” he asked her. 

"Purity," she told him. 

He couldn't stand to wear white. _Purity_. Not him. He scorched it black with a curse. 

The furniture had to be sold to make up as much of the debt as possible - the rest of it, Draco had originally hoped. It was all antique, some of it very old. The problem was that, upon closer inspection, it had been mostly destroyed. There were… secretions, on much of the upholstery, the kind that wouldn’t come out with a good scrubbing, or a well-placed cleaning charm. The portraits… Draco had tried to sell those, but even though they had been painted by wizarding masters, the portraits were not worth much money in the current political climate. They tended to air their views, much like Aunt Wallburga in the Black family home, in ways that offended the modern ear. 

The wood furniture managed to fetch some money. The dining table, where Voldemort had held court, was a total loss, as were all the chairs, but his father’s writing desk fetched five hundred galleons, and the parlour and sitting room tables another three hundred. Draco sold the cabinets, the china, the remaining silver, sold the hardware off the doors, sold the knobs in the kitchens, he pried the mouldings off the ceilings with his wand and sent them to carpenters, he cannibalized every bit of his mouldering old house that had any value, and still only had another five thousand galleons to send to his solicitors. 

Then came the problem of food. He and Narcissa needed to eat, at least theoretically, in Narcissa’s case, and they needed wood to keep the fires going. The moment the cupboard was bare, Draco regretted burning his piano. It would have fetched at least ten thousand galleons, and they could have eaten for a year or two. 

No matter. Draco went into the closets and found a treasure trove there - historic costumes, vintage stockings, shoes… and they could be sold to muggles as well. Costume departments in theaters were always looking for period appropriate clothing. Draco kept a few for himself. Simple white shirts, black breeches, a black tunic, a black cloak. The shoes were all ghastly, a few hundred years old, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed up with magic and a bit of shoe polish. His mother embroidered the cloak for him. She was always talented at useless things - couldn’t sew a dress, but she could decorate it so it looked like it had been worked over by goblin handicrafters. 

When he was finished selling everything that wasn’t nailed down, he had a larder full of food, a stock of wood and coal to last the winter, placated solicitors, and clothes. Never mind they were only in two colors - it was in keeping with his new aesthetic, in keeping with his new last name. 

When that was done, he had to think about how they were going to  _ keep  _ the larder full, the fires lit, and the solicitors placated. He couldn’t keep selling everything - they would run out, and he’d rather like to stop before they got hungry enough to sell the books in the library. It was the one place he bothered to cast cleaning charms on, these days. Voldemort and his followers hadn’t liked the library. They liked books, of course, but only the nasty ones Lucius had kept in his study. The library had been gloriously unmolested, and as a result, it was the only place Draco felt comfortable. 

Holed up in there, on a cot he’d dragged up to the mezzanine, reading through  _ The Count of Monte Cristo _ and wishing someone had wronged him enough to plot revenge, he had a flash of inspiration. He did have a marketable skill - but he’d have to make his way in the muggle world to do it. 

Early the next morning, dressed in his new (to him) black tunic and breeches, and armed with a black leather portfolio he’d worked out of with his governess, he fire called his solicitor and asked to file an exception to his house arrest to seek employment. 

Dawlish was assigned to come with him, and Draco went to London. He knocked on the doors of publishing houses, offering to illustrate, to write for them, but there was very little call for the type of illuminated manuscript style text in which he had been trained. Many of them wanted something called “graphic artists” - he’d have to learn how to draw on a computer, and he was totally out of his depth. 

They all wanted resumes - even the independently owned stationary stores - and they laughed when he handed them his  _ Curriculum Vitae _ , which was hand written on his best parchment and, admittedly, wasn’t very impressive anyway. They didn’t understand about his N.E.W.T.S. either; that was another thing, they wanted an art qualification, and all he had was the very best classical training and a portfolio of his handwriting, which he thought rather ought to speak for itself. 

In the end, it appeared he would have to start his own business. There were loads of people in Britain, just like his mother, too up their own arses to address wedding envelopes themselves. He could take orders now for that, and in time, he could illustrate the stationary as well, so long as he practiced. So he went home and had a hard think about where he was going to get the money to advertise and buy parchment. 

He decided on the gates. They were iron, he could sell them for scrap. He had a local handyman come out and sold it to him that day. In a stroke of good fortune, the man knew a builder who might want the stones that stood alongside the gates, and by noon he’d made a tidy figure, enough to buy some newspaper advertisements and to buy a computer and a telephone to take orders. 

That was the beginning. It started slow; he built a reputation, mostly by word of mouth, and then he was practically buried in work. 

But he needed more time to practice his manuscript, to practice drawing, so he could expand his business, or else he’d be sunk behind the competition. Muggles were inventing new ways of designing things, new ways of printing - he could see it on the websites of his competitors. The cost of doing business for them was dropping like a stone. He couldn’t keep hand writing everything indefinitely. 

That’s when he struck upon the idea of enchanting his quills. He modified a gemino charm to channel itself through the quills. When he wrote an address in a book, he could get the quills to print it for him as many times as he needed. That worked for return addresses - he still had to print the invitee’s addresses himself, which was laborious. He also struck upon the idea of having different quills master different fonts, so that it was easy to set the quills to working when an order came in. 

Two months into his house arrest, he’d taken his first calligraphy work and was practicing his illustration nearly constantly. He had no references to work from other than the portraits and photographs of the house, so that’s what he drew. He most liked drawing the Black family - his mother, Andromeda, Regulus, Sirius. When he wasn’t hunched over at his desk, scribbling away and practicing new fonts, he was in front of one of the portraits in some wing of the house that was gradually accumulating rat droppings and moisture. 

His mother found him in a particularly wretched hallway one Saturday. It was raining, and drips of water were coming in through a hole in the roof not five feet behind where he had set up his sketching easel. 

“Draco,” she said. Her voice had become husky already, losing a bit of its strength. 

“Mother.” He had stopped drawing. He hadn’t noticed yet, in those days, that she was hurting herself as badly as she was, but it was fluttering around the edge of his consciousness, the need to do something about it.

“Don’t you think you ought to spend some time for yourself? Instead of working all the time?”

“This is time for myself,” said Draco. “This is all I have left to do.”

“What about friends?” 

“What about them? I’m on house arrest, I’m not allowed - 

“I am,” said Narcissa. “Our solicitors said I could have guests, provided I clear them with Dawlish.” 

And that’s how Pansy had come over and discovered him working on calligraphy with chicken feathers. 

“No,” she said, staunchly. “I won’t let you do this.”

“They get the job done, Pansy.”

“That’s neither here nor there. You need a proper quill.”

“I’m skint, I’m not spending my galleons on expensive quills when I could be reinvesting in my business. I need more advertising, and calling cards, and I need to pay my taxes. I’m doing business with muggles - that means I have to pay taxes to the Ministry and the muggle government, and both rates are exorbitant. My profit margins are razor thin.” Draco reached out and wrangled the white feather away from her. “I can’t afford an extra five knuts for quills, let alone five galleons for the ones I wrote with in school.” 

“Where are you getting these?”   


Draco smiled. “If I told you that I was sneaking onto what used to be our estate farmland and stealing feathers out of chicken coops, would you tell Dawlish on me?”

“You’re joking.”

“I am,” said Draco, dipping the feather into his inkwell. “I stand at the border of the current property, just in the northwest corner, and summon them. I’m not stupid enough to risk Azkaban for a few extra knuts.”

“I’m buying you a proper quill,” said Pansy. “As many as you need.”

“I need quite a few,” said Draco, gesturing to a table set across from his desk, where five quills were scratching away at envelopes. 

“I’ll buy you a set of a hundred to start,” said Pansy. She happened to glance up at the ceiling, where Draco had recently expanded his sketching practice to painting. “Did you draw that?”

“Yes,” said Draco, looking at the half-formed sketches. “And before you say anything - “

“Oh no, Draco, you’ve put him up there.”

Draco set down his quill and buried his head in his elbow. 

“After all this time, Draco? How long has it been since you’ve even had a proper conversation with him?”

“I haven’t, ever, because I was a little shit to him. The closest I ever got was those enchanted buttons, fourth year.” Draco’s words were muffled by the arm he’d buried his cowardly head inside. He hated himself. He hated how impotently obsessed he was. 

“Well. That answers my next question, then.”

“What was your next question,” said Draco, in a monotone. 

“What color you’d like your quills. I was going to go with black, but something tells me you’d prefer emerald.”

“For fuck’s sake, Pansy.”

He couldn’t deny he liked working with the quills she sent. They were  _ exactly _ the right color of green. It was torture, writing wedding invitations with those quills; they made him have impossible fantasies of his and Harry’s wedding. What colors the flowers would be, what they would wear, the metal on their rings. How they would decorate their house - the Black house, Draco knew Harry was living there - what pets they would have, what they would name their children. 

And because he was thinking about it anyway, and because he needed the practice, and because he swore on his life that he wasn’t going to let another living being come within ten feet of this blasted portfolio, he used their names to help him develop his fonts and designs. 

He had to put something down, just to practice. It might as well be their names. So he amassed a hundred iterations of:

Together with their families, 

Draco Black 

And 

Harry James Potter

Cordially request the pleasure of your company

At their wedding

1 July at half past two in the afternoon

Dinner and dancing to follow

He found it so much more stimulating than the random names he had been using that he found himself spending hours upon hours practicing when it wasn’t strictly necessary. Same with his illustrations - once he hit upon the ridiculous fantasy that everything he drew was a part of the world of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, he could lose himself in whatever he was sketching. He drew animals he imagined living in the back garden, he drew furniture he’d like to see in the rooms. He had vague memories of the place from when he was very small, and photographs to help him along in the Black family albums in his mother’s rooms. 

Over time, his portfolio became a highly structured, intensely detailed simulacrum, into which he retreated every time he felt lonely, or saw Potter’s face in the papers, or suffered through Pansy dropping his name. He named all the fictional rabbits in the back garden, and the fictional turtles, and the fictional snakes. He designed and illustrated the landscaping outside and every stick of furniture inside. He practiced new fonts by writing their names, then writing their children’s names. _Orion Harry Black Potter_ , he wrote. _Aquila Lily Black Potter._ _Cassiopeia. Scorpius. Ara._

Where they would get all these children, and who would be bearing them, Draco tried not to interrogate too closely. Surely something could be arranged; they were wizards, after all. The more important question was what kind of clothes they would be wearing, and what kind of pets they’d have, and what the pattern of wallpaper would be in their nurseries. 

It occurred to him, regularly, how absolutely pathetic he was being, but he was locked up in this blasted house for five years and nothing to do but dig himself out from underneath a mountain of debt. 

His mother and Pansy kept trying to find new ways of distracting him. “New hobbies,” said his mother. He took up sculpture, and gardening, but those invariably led him right back to the same dead end. 

He’d studied art history, and so when he began to practice, he started by emulating the classics.  _ It’s just practice _ , he told himself.  _ Every sculptor makes Achilles.  _ Never mind that he was paying special attention to the proportions, imagining carefully what arms and legs he’d only seen covered in school uniforms and quidditch gear would look like in Greek battle armor.

He took the marble from the walls of the house. He didn’t realize, when he was taking it out, that the walls were held together with magic, and carving out marble from one unused room would affect the rest of it. Every time he took another block, the whole thing cracked with tiny black fissures, and as Draco’s sculpting hobby became an obsession, the white stone of the house looked like it had sustained the damage of a hellish earthquake. 

No matter. Draco was managing to save some money now. They would abandon the manor, as soon as his house arrest was over, and he would have enough to make a downpayment on a flat or a condominium. In the meantime, Draco left the house to rot from the outside in. 

The upshot of his new hobby (old hobby really, if you put it in the same category of obsessing over Harry Potter in an artistic medium) was that he was spending a larger amount of time outside, and warming charms, while effective, tended to wear off just as he was chiseling an invariably critical piece of heroic musculature. Draco needed a coat. A proper one. He’d denuded the closets of old cloaks, but there were still a few moldering furs in tattered boxes somewhere. 

Unfortunately, they had moldered too long, and at improper temperatures. He remembered Pansy telling him, fourth year, that the fur she’d worn to the Yule Ball had to be returned to a refrigerated chamber in Edinburgh before she went home for the New Year. These had been set away since the 1920’s, and they were total losses. 

He had resigned himself to the inconvenience of warming charms for the winter, when, rummaging through the gamekeeper’s cottage for a spare bit of iron, he’d found the fox traps. 

Fifteen full traps later, and he had enough fur to make something decently warm, but he held out for five more so he could have a full length coat. He impressed his mother into duty as a seamstress, and for once in her life, she made something useful. The coat kept out the cold, even if it wasn’t up to their usual standards of dress. Draco didn’t care anymore. He’d come through the wrong side of the war - he was an actual war criminal, with the papers to prove it - and he didn’t deserve anything so fine as a bespoke fur coat. He didn’t deserve the chance to be here, in his garden, wearing it, indulging his most ridiculous fantasies of romance with a perfect creation. 

Oh, and how perfect he was. Draco followed him in the press every chance he got… Pansy mocked him for always having six tattered copies of  _ The Daily Prophet _ tucked into the drawers of his desk, all of them with Potter’s face on them. She vulgarly referred to it as his “spank bank,” an accusation he could scarcely deny. 

He’d gotten more beautiful, somehow, his face taking on harder lines and his body swelling under his Auror uniform. Every time Draco thought he might have captured his likeness in a sculpture or a sketch or a painting, his face would be in the papers again, looking nobler than ever. 

Adding to his ever mounting distress, Draco had noticed that his mother was a bit too attached to her sewing box. There were… little pricks, in her skin, from the needles. That was the worst of it, at least that he could see, but when he confronted her about it, he ran her sleeves up, and that’s when he saw what she’d been doing with the scissors. 

A year after his house arrest had begun, Draco had built up a bit of gold in the chest in the library. It wasn’t much, after their expenses, the taxes from both governments, and repaying the solicitors, but it was enough to bring a mind healer out. 

The mind healer took one look at her, at her thinning hair, at the fuzz that had started growing on her arms, her body’s last ditch effort to keep her warm after she’d lost all her fat, at the gouging scars crossing her biceps, her thighs, her… her belly ( _ fuck, it was so bad, he didn’t know it had been that bad) _ , and then all the gold was gone, and they were in more debt. 

She got better, and then worse, her health waxing and waning, never really recovering despite all the treatment Draco arranged for her. His work took on a manic quality. It was his only refuge, besides Pansy. The only thing he could control. And when he wasn’t working, he was practicing, trying to bury himself in the fantasy he’d created, one where he wasn’t evil incarnate, one where he got to touch Potter’s body, even if it was made of marble. 

“Unhealthy,” his mother called it, and in his lower moments he thought about sniping back, “You’re one to talk, aren’t you?”, but he didn’t. 

The years of his confinement passed, and every time he amassed a little gold, out it went again. After five years, sixty thousand galleons of their debt to the solicitors was still outstanding, and Draco was barely beating back the medical debt. He faced the end of his house arrest no richer than he’d begun it, and the prospect of leaving the manor, of making a new start somewhere humble and clean, was looking more and more unlikely. 

Belatedly, he wished he’d maintained the interior of the property better than he had done. It was dank and squalid in the places he and his mother hadn’t used. But he couldn’t bring himself to clean it. Cleaning it was admitting they’d never leave; and who were  _ they _ to deserve a polished chandelier, a grand entrance hall? The kitchens were clean, and the library, and his mother’s rooms. 

The time approached for him to leave the house arrest program. He thought he’d be in a more celebratory mood, thought he would go to Twilfitt and Tattings and have a new set of robes made, thought he would have treated Dawlish to a bottle of Moet. He’d come to like Dawlish, after all this time. He was a decent sort. Not fit for active duty anymore - too many head injuries in the war - but he was well suited for keeping track of Death Eaters that weren’t any danger to other people. 

When it came time for their last parole interview, Draco only had enough money to buy a tea service at a second hand shop in the village, and so that’s what they were drinking when Dawlish told him that he was retiring at the end of the month. 

“Congratulations,” said Draco, but he was thinking only about himself, as usual. Who was going to replace him as a probation officer? It was bound to be some scummy bastard that would extort him, or else some annoying, green about the ears trainee that would look at him like he was a monster. 

“Don’t worry,” said Dawlish, sensing his thoughts. “They’ll find someone decent to look after you, I’m sure of it.”   
  
  
  
  
  



	7. Exaudi Orationem Meam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco meets his probation officer.

Of course it was Potter. 

As if Draco hadn’t already been torturing himself thinking about him, morning, noon, and night for five years, while his only diversion from obsessing about Harry Potter had been creating a highly detailed fictional world involving Harry Potter. 

Draco prepared himself meticulously for their first meeting. He couldn’t - he wouldn’t allow himself - to try and deliberately make himself look attractive. He couldn’t bear to hope. But he could at least be clean, could scrub off the marble dust, clean out the ink from under his fingernails, wear his full set of black robes instead of the ratty Victorian era nightshirt he’d been padding around in. 

And then Potter had the nerve to stand him up, for hours, while Draco sat in a chair in the Auror department, trying not to fidget too much, trying not to pick up a pen and doodle their names in his very best script, the kind he charged ten pounds a page for. When he finally arrived, Draco was starving, and he’d been without his portfolio or his latest block of stone for nearly a whole day, and didn’t know what to do with himself, so the sight of Harry Potter nearly caused him to collapse on the spot. 

Potter had gained at least three stone since school, and  _ oh, oh _ , it was all muscle, every bit of it, sharp and magnificent under his red Auror robes, and his face was smudged with dirt, like he’d been rolling around a Quidditch pitch, his eyes greener than ever, a harried look on his face. He must have come from doing something difficult and important. Draco wanted to throw himself on the ground and prostrate himself before him, but somehow managed to look vaguely irritated at being held up in Potter’s office, instead. 

The same thing happened the next day, only Draco’s cock was half stiff in the chair, waiting for him, wondering the whole time whether he could escape to the Auror restrooms to tug himself off, but the thought of Weasley in the stall next to him scared him off. 

This time, Potter came in looking not so much harried as fagged out and starving. He offered to buy him something to eat, but Draco didn’t trust his knees well enough to walk alongside him. They felt wobbly, like they would give out any second, when he finally staggered in the direction of the apparition point. Pathetic.

They planned to meet on Friday, but at the last moment, Potter sent him an owl to let him know to meet him at his house, 12 Grimmauld Place. 

Draco allowed himself ten minutes of an actual, real hysterical episode in which he hyperventilated and shrieked before shutting it down and compartmentalizing. 

When he arrived, he was sorely disappointed. Potter opened the door and was decidedly  _ not  _ in his Auror uniform. He was in a hooded sweatshirt and  _ trainers _ . He dressed abominably. Draco wanted to chuck everything in his wardrobe and take him shopping. He’d do it, too, if Harry would let him - he’d save up every spare pound he made until the chest in his library was full, and completely replace every rag of clothing. Harry needed someone to take charge, to tell him what was what, to show him how valuable he was. As it stood, he was treating the statue of  _ The David _ like a five knut Christmas bauble.

Draco knew he wasn’t disguising how repulsed he was by Harry’s clothing. That was fine with him. Let him think Draco was still the snobby, aristocratic arse he’d always been - it was convenient enough camouflage for his true feelings. Same with his house. This property, which had been so much a part of his fantasies, had been neglected and defiled by Potter’s poor taste, by his inability to care about himself. If the house was Draco’s (if  _ Harry  _ was Draco’s), he would take care of it, make it a place that a hero deserved. How could his friends let him live like this, like a common pauper, if they really loved him? Couldn’t they at least buy him a present or two, silk sheets or fancy vases, at Christmas or on his birthday? 

He spent most of the interview side-stepping Harry’s personal questions and trying not to allow his imagination to run away from him (giving Harry a proper bubble bath, combing his hair, setting his laundry on the lines outside, so they smelled like sunshine, petting him until he hummed and purred, bringing him sweet things to eat, hand feeding him in bed, letting him lie in for hours, for days, for as long as he liked, forever). Halfway through, he was distracted by the obvious fact that Potter had been assigned to surveil him. He was terrible at subterfuge; it was so readily apparent. Draco wondered what motivation the ministry could possibly have for putting him under additional scrutiny, but arrived at the conclusion that an attempt at extortion was probably forthcoming, even if Potter wasn’t aware of it.

Even more distracting was the way he kept licking his lips. Draco wished he’d stop it. 

It didn’t trouble Draco, being watched - Potter was too good to ever make any false reports about him, regardless of how transparent he made his contempt for Draco. Still, he went home and took measures to ensure his fantasies weren’t discovered. First thing that evening, he set some ground rules for Pansy. 

“I’m not allowed to say his name?” said Pansy, deep into her third glass of the wine she’d brought for them. 

“Not in writing, and not here,” said Draco. “I assume he’ll be watching my correspondence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s made to watch me in person, or set seeing eyes on my property.” 

“How about a code name?” she said. 

“Oh my God,” Draco despaired. “You’re going to make this a waking nightmare, aren’t you.”

“Can I send you newspaper clippings? I know how you like newspaper clippings.”

“If it wasn’t in extremely poor taste, I’d make a joke about killing myself.”

“Don’t stop yourself on my account. You know how I feel about bad jokes.”

“Is that why you’ve taken up with Blaise?”

“You know why I’ve taken up with Blaise, Draco. It’s enormous.”

“I can’t say, given my preference for being on top, that’s something I took note of, but thank you for the image of my childhood best friend being speared by a giant cock.”

Pansy giggled. Draco chucked back the rest of his drink. 

The upshot of meeting Potter more frequently was that he now had a reference: a real, live reference for the sketches and sculptures he’d been making, and he finally decided to go ahead and actually sculpt Potter. It would take him all year to finally get it right anyway (or at least close to right - how could he ever make anything close to the elegance of his actual likeness? It was like trying to carve a mountain range with a shovel), and so as long as he was careful to keep it covered, Potter would never see it. 

Their first meeting at the manor was uneventful enough, but two things were clearly established. 

First, Potter had slipped into his room when Draco had left to see to his mother and snooped around. 

Draco had left his copy of  _ Pride and Prejudice  _ open to a very specific page, in the middle of Elizabeth Bennett reading Mr. Darcy’s letter, and when he came back up to his cot at the end of the day it was open to the page where Mr. Collins was proposing to Lizzie. The revelation that Potter had been in his  _ bedroom _ gave Draco the abrupt paranoia and also wild hope that he’d planted a seeing eye in the room somewhere, which led to him tossing off immediately, fantasizing that Potter was watching him. 

The second thing was that his mother was going to make him just as miserable as Pansy. 

Draco had been nervous that morning and distracted by the mountain of work he’d left undone the previous week, when he’d spent three days trying to meet Potter, and she’d somehow slipped out of her room after breakfast and sat lying in wait for him to ring their doorbell, like a bloody spider catching an insect. 

“I watched him, Draco,” Narcissa said to him that night, over dinner (or at least, over Draco’s dinner. She wasn’t eating again, had hardly eaten for weeks). “He is not  _ opposed _ to you, or not as much as you are inclined to believe.”

“I’m not inclined to believe anything, Mother. I know for a fact that we hate each other.”

“Is that so?” His mother’s voice was a husk of what it once was. When he was a child, it had sounded like a pretty bird, or a much-loved cat. Now it sounded like a hollow shell. 

She wouldn’t give it a rest, and the next time Potter was due to turn up, she’d baked.  _ She _ , his mother, Narcissa Black, who wouldn’t let so much as a wimberry enter her mouth before she’d walked up and down a flight of stairs, had made biscuits and treacle tart, and brought out the pathetic second-hand tea service he’d bought for himself at the end of his house arrest. 

He was arguing with her in the garden, and lost track of time, when Potter turned up, looking gorgeous as ever now that he was back in that blasted Auror uniform, and his mother manipulated him into a tea party. 

_ Somehow _ they arranged for it to be a regular occurrence. Well. Not somehow. Harry got the whole sad story out of him about his mother, an eventuality he had been determined to postpone for longer than two meetings, and evidently he felt Draco and his mother were pathetic enough that he arranged to stop by for tea regularly. 

So Narcissa had been successful - she’d managed to set up a recurring date for her son with a handsome man, even if it only was for the purpose of pitying him. Draco went to bed even more disgusted with himself than when he had woken up. It didn’t stop him from touching himself for nearly an hour the next morning, imagining Potter was spying on him in the Auror office, watching him tease himself, roll his balls in between his fingers, pull up his nightshirt so his nipples were exposed, rub his cock with the hard flat of his hand. 

When he came, he closed his eyes. 

\----------------------------

A few weeks into his probation, Draco decided he’d had quite enough of Pansy’s veiled cuntishness in her letters, his mother’s wheedling exhortations, and his own rank cowardice, and he elected to open the door shirtless and just see how Potter reacted. 

He had expected him to be embarrassed, perhaps a bit disgusted, but his open-mouthed drooling was. Well. A surprise. Potter was attracted to him, physically. Even Draco had to concede that he was rather attractive, in a superficial way, if you discounted the criminal record and the abominable personality and the lack of any constructive social contacts. 

Still, that moment at the door, when he nearly had to snap his fingers in front of Potter’s face to get him to refocus - it ruined him for days. He could hardly leave his bed, he was so shattered by knowing that Potter might want to see him naked, or touch him. He rather thought this outcome might lift his spirits, knowing that he wasn’t, at base, repulsive to the object of his long desire, but instead it plunged him into a black pit.

Where from here? Draco was at a loss. He had never had cause to flirt with anyone before, because he had never wanted anyone besides Potter. Every other sexual contact he’d had, in school, had happened because the other person wanted it. Blaise, and Theo, and that seventh year from Durmstrang during the tournament, who had taught him how to properly get a cock all the way down his throat, had all come  _ looking  _ for him, and more or less begged to sit on his cock, and Draco had been able to lay back and receive them. 

Harry Potter would do no such thing. He would have to be wooed, and delicately, but Draco was out of his depth. He tried making allusions, references to things in the hopes that Potter would pick up what he was putting down, have a reaction to Draco’s obliqueness that Draco could exploit, but either he didn’t know what he was talking about, or he wasn’t interested. Probably the former. And the latter. Both. 

It seemed impossible to make any headway. That was because, as he kept telling himself, the epic romance Draco had written in his portfolio would never happen. The most this would come to was a roll in the hay. Maybe Potter would let him suck him off once or twice, and that would have to last Draco for the rest of his life, while he waited a century for his welcome demise. 

And then, just before Christmas, Potter left without telling him, just disappeared on an assignment without so much as an explanatory owl, and Neville Longbottom showed up for their Tuesday morning meeting. 

“Draco,” said Neville, standing in his garden, looking at all the statues in amazement. “Do you know, I think people would pay you for these.”

“The market for Renaissance style sculptures has been fairly lacking these last five centuries,” Draco quipped, his irritation at his own disappointment so close to the surface he could feel it like an itch. “Where’s Potter?”

He meant the question to come out short, like he was an inconvenienced customer, but he met new humiliation when it came out plaintive, and when Longbottom gave him a knowing look. 

“I mean it, about the sculptures, Draco. I think the ministry is looking for someone to -” Draco turned his back, dismissive. “He’s in Norway. Did he not tell you?”

“Of course not, why would he tell me anything?” Draco said, trying to make his voice flat, knowing he was failing. 

“It seemed like… never mind. Thanks for working with Hannah on the invitations. We’ve been meaning to come round to see you.”

“No need. I arrange everything by post.”

“I meant to see you socially. Harry says you’re not having many visitors. If you wouldn’t mind, we could -”

“Drop by out of pity? No thank you.”

Longbottom didn’t say how long Harry would be in Norway, only that Robards had sent him there after a difference of opinion on a case, so Draco assumed the worst, as was his wont, and prepared for Potter to be gone forever. Christmas was coming, and he had hoped that perhaps when Potter dropped by for tea, he could convince his mother to make the candy cane cookies she had made in his youth, the white and red cookie dough woven together and decorated with confections, and he could have a fire in the library, and they could, the three of them, sit before the hearth, and Draco could pretend for one moment that they were a real family, that they were bound by more than Draco’s need for criminal supervision. Oh  _ Merlin _ , how stupid he was, how lowly his love for Potter made him. 

He hadn’t looked forward to Christmas in years, and to have his meager hopes dashed was heartbreaking. He and his mother could hardly afford gifts, and everything they gave each other had to be handmade. On Christmas Eve, after setting a few logs ablaze, he went up to his cot in the mezzanine, and pulled out from under it his portfolio. He’d drawn a portrait of his mother for Christmas, with himself in her arms, from a photograph his father must have taken right after Draco was born. He had the soft, scowling look of a newborn, and his mother was pressing a kiss to the top of his head. He wished more than anything to go back in time, to have a chance to be with his mother when she was healthy. 

She’d been getting worse, again. Going backwards. She wasn’t eating as much, and when he sat down next to her and handed her gift to her, he was worried that she might not be able to lift the light wooden frame. 

They’d lit up a small fir tree they’d found growing in the back garden. Draco’s presents were there underneath it, and some for Narcissa as well. He opened the package from Pansy first, cringing, expecting another bad joke about Potter, another green quill, but instead, it was a book on the history of medieval sculpture. Unexpectedly touched, he swallowed heavily and reached for his mother’s present to him, which was a lovely yellow scarf, embroidered with her delicate needlework. 

Narcissa opened her present from Pansy - a new set of slippers, the kind that were warm and fuzzy but had hard bottoms, and so could be worn out of doors. Draco reminded himself to send her a note of thanks - it was difficult, sometimes, to afford shoes given their debt burden, and Draco had never quite mastered cobbling shoes together. 

After they’d finished opening their packages, he rose to refill his eggnog. Suddenly, the fire turned green and made a  _ pop _ , and there were two packages inside. 

He knew whom they were from without looking. His mother watched him carefully as he pulled them out of the fire. 

She opened hers first. It was a bottle of scandanavian liquor, accompanied by a cheerful note only Potter could have written, something about wishing he could be at the manor for Christmastime, sending his regrets etc etc. Draco’s teeth were on edge listening to her read it for him in a falsely cheerful voice.

He opened his package next, which was a book about...

_ Fuck _ . It was a book about Scandanavian heroes. The lightning god, of all things. Thor. 

Draco wanted to dissolve into maudlin weeping, but he couldn’t, not with his mother sitting next to him. He had never confided in her, never come out and told her the quality of his fixation, and he couldn’t bring himself to let her see now. It was the work of miracles that he kept his face stoic. 

Harry couldn’t know what this book, with the lightning bolt on the cover, meant to Draco, at least not consciously. But the fact that he had absorbed Draco’s interest, had noticed how much he loved mythic heroism… caught an ember of hope in Draco, and fanned into a flame. 

The art that Draco had loved had always gotten under his skin and transformed him in ways he wasn’t aware of, sometimes until years later, until he had the experience to understand it. Bach had been that way, and so had his most favorite sculpture.  _ Laocoon _ . The suffering, the intensity, settled into him without appreciation. What did he know, as a pampered child, of rage and wretchedness? And then, once he knew it, the snake from  _ Laocoon  _ made real in his house, eating his pets, it was the only thing he could think about. He had been stuck on the other side of a war from his most beloved enemy, he’d been half drowned in the surf, strangled and eaten by a giant snake, gasping for air, and fighting, and losing, all the same. 

Perhaps something similar had happened to Harry, Draco hoped. Perhaps he had seen Draco’s sculptures, his worship of heroism, and had a dim, half-formed thought that he, Harry, was a hero, that Draco was worshipping  _ him _ . 

Draco knew the thought would be dim and half-formed because Potter, laughably, didn’t think of himself as a hero. Even if Draco told him how much this book meant to him, he wouldn’t understand. Not yet. 

But maybe, if Harry let Draco spoil him the way he deserved, fall at his magnificent feet. Maybe then. 

“Happy Christmas, Draco,” said his mother. She lifted her glass to toast him. She sounded very much like her old self, just for a moment. 

“Happy Christmas,” answered Draco, and he touched his glass to hers. When she went to bed, he nearly ran back to his portfolio in the mezzanine, to find something half worthy of sending to Harry Potter for Christmas. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr! Come follow me.   
> https://cassiopeiasshadow.tumblr.com/


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